Trood M1, Spivak B1, McEwan T1
1Centre For Forensic Behavioural Science and Forensicare, Swinburne University of Technology
Biography:
Dr Michael Trood is a research fellow at Swinburne University’s Centre for Forensic Behavioral Science and Forensicare. Michael’s research interests are crime statistics, family violence, and criminal justice interventions aimed at reducing offending. He has over four years of experience in the social sector, most recently working with young offenders with multiple and complex needs.
Family violence has become a priority for numerous police services in the past two decades, however the overwhelming number of family violence reports has presented challenges to developing and implementing effective responses. One increasingly popular approach to policing family violence has been to utilise risk assessments to determine which cases require more intensive management. A particularly concerning form of family violence for police services involve violent incidents that result in physical harm and death. However, there have been few attempts to utilise risk assessments to predict this form of family violence and none in Australia.
This talk presents the results of a number of studies conducted as part of a collaboration between Victoria Police and the Centre for Forensic Behavioural Science, Swinburne University of Technology, to implement an approach to assessing risk for high severity family violence incidents. The talk will cover the challenges involved in predicting high severity family violence, the extent to which the current instrument utilised by Victoria Police can successfully predict high severity family violence and subsequent work on the ‘case prioritisation tool’, a novel approach to assessing the risk of ‘high severity’ family violence incidents. The talk will finish with implications for policing services and a summary of what has been learnt through this research collaboration.