Police tried to conceal ‘lost’ family violence

Police were wrongly downgrading 33,000 family violence offences every year, a fact it tried to keep secret by refusing to release a damning investigation document and removing key findings from public reports.

The ‘‘lost’’ crimes – revealed in a 2019 audit but released to Stuff only after the government’s information watchdog intervened this month – represented an ‘‘organisation wide failure’’, the report said, in which legal obligations to victims were not upheld, and chances to hold offenders to account were missed.

The report, an investigation into three months of family harm files, found police were incorrectly coding offences more than half the time. Instead, crimes like ‘‘intent to cause injury’’ – were wrongly chalked up as ‘‘incidents’’.

‘‘Those numbers represent thousands of women who were told to reach out for help when they were at risk, and were let down,’’ said Natalie Thorburn, from Women’s Refuge. ‘‘It inevitably deters women from reporting abuse, because if it doesn’t get taken seriously, they think ‘why risk it?’’’

Police said since the report was released, it had reduced the number of offences coded incorrectly to 24,000 a year. It said it believed the effect the coding may have had on decision-making would be ‘‘negligible’’.

‘‘It’s important to note that frontline officers are still responding to incidents appropriately and providing the support families need,’’ a statement said.

However, the audit said because of the low accuracy rate, offences against 33,000 victims were lost every year, because ‘‘incidents’’ were not recorded in the main police data system, the National Intelligence Application.

It said this impacted both the quality of investigations, and the public’s understanding of family

violence rates.

‘‘When reports are inaccurately coded, the nature of what has been reported is lost or misleading,’’ the report said.

The findings mirrored a 2016 report, meaning opportunities to address the error had been missed. Supervisor checks, management oversight and quality assurance processes had all failed to improve the rate of inaccurate coding. Extra training had not been provided despite concerns being raised about the use of the family harm incident code, 5F.

Reasons for the errors were varied, the report said. The police data systems were clunky; the app used by police when recording family harm defaulted to the family incident code; and codes between systems were inconsistent.

But there were gaps in understanding, too, highlighted by the fact that some districts did not have the coding issue.

Many officers appeared to believe they should only code an offence if they can be proven to have occurred, which was not correct, the report said.

Others didn’t code an offence even when they knew one had occurred, because ‘‘cultural and management pressures’’ meant they felt they’d be required to explain why they weren’t prosecuting.

‘‘Those numbers represent thousands of women who were told to reach out for help when they were at risk, and were let down.’’ Natalie Thorburn

Women’s Refuge