The criminal career trajectories of domestic violence offenders

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Dowling ◽  
Hayley Boxall

This study examines the officially recorded criminal careers of 2,076 domestic violence offenders and 9,925 non-domestic violence offenders in New South Wales in the 10 years following their first police proceeding. Group-based trajectory modelling was used to examine both domestic violence and non-domestic violence offending. Special attention is given to the degree of versatility in offending, and to the interplay of domestic violence and non-domestic violence offending trajectories. Domestic violence offending often formed part of a broader pattern of offending. While trajectories of low‑frequency domestic violence and non-domestic violence offending were most common, domestic violence typically increases as non-domestic violence offences begin to decline. Importantly, there was variability in the offending profiles of domestic violence offenders. This was amplified when non-domestic violence offending was analysed, indicative of a complex array of underlying risk factors.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Karystianis ◽  
Annabeth Simpson ◽  
Armita Adily ◽  
Peter Schofield ◽  
David Greenberg ◽  
...  

BACKGROUND The New South Wales Police Force (NSWPF) records details of significant numbers of domestic violence (DV) events they attend each year as both structured quantitative data and unstructured free text. Accessing information contained in the free text such as the victim’s and persons of interest (POI's) mental health status could be useful in the better management of DV events attended by the police and thus improve health, justice, and social outcomes. OBJECTIVE The aim of this study is to present the prevalence of extracted mental illness mentions for POIs and victims in police-recorded DV events. METHODS We applied a knowledge-driven text mining method to recognize mental illness mentions for victims and POIs from police-recorded DV events. RESULTS In 416,441 police-recorded DV events with single POIs and single victims, we identified 64,587 events (15.51%) with at least one mental illness mention versus 4295 (1.03%) recorded in the structured fixed fields. Two-thirds (67,582/85,880, 78.69%) of mental illnesses were associated with POIs versus 21.30% (18,298/85,880) with victims; depression was the most common condition in both victims (2822/12,589, 22.42%) and POIs (7496/39,269, 19.01%). Mental illnesses were most common among POIs aged 0-14 years (623/1612, 38.65%) and in victims aged over 65 years (1227/22,873, 5.36%). CONCLUSIONS A wealth of mental illness information exists within police-recorded DV events that can be extracted using text mining. The results showed mood-related illnesses were the most common in both victims and POIs. Further investigation is required to determine the reliability of the mental illness mentions against sources of diagnostic information.


1883 ◽  
Vol 36 (228-231) ◽  
pp. 4-4

In this communication the author gives a description of a fossil humerus from the breccia cave of Wellington Valley, which repeats the characters of that bone in the existing monotrematous genus Echidna more closely than those of the same bone in any other known kind of mammal. The fossil, however, greatly exceeds in size that of the existing Australian species, Echidna hystrix , Cuv. The existence of, at least, two other kinds lately discovered living in New Guinea has been made known in memoirs by Professor Gervais and Mr. E. P. Ramsay, E .L .S.; these occupy, in respect of size, the interval between them and the Australian Ech. hystrix , but the subject of the present paper makes known the largest Monotreme hitherto discovered. Figures of the fossil in question, and of the corresponding bone of the smaller existing Australian kind, accompany the text. The fossil formed part of the series of remains obtained from the cave above cited, and was with them submitted to the author, who proposes to indicate the present acquisition by the name Echidna Ramsayi .


2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 415-433 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom van Ham ◽  
Arjan A.J. Blokland ◽  
Henk B. Ferwerda ◽  
Theo A.H. Doreleijers ◽  
Otto M.J. Adang

Since the 1970s theoretical and empirical work on public violence has mainly focused on the context in which public violence takes place, assuming that public violence offenders are ordinary people acting in extraordinary circumstances. Recent studies however indicate that ‘hooligans’ share many characteristics with other violent offenders, which has (re)fuelled the notion that individual propensity is important in explaining public violence, and that public violence offenders generally fit the small group of serious and persistent offenders identified by Moffitt. Based on Dutch police data on 438 individuals involved in public violence, we examined the criminal careers of public violence offenders leading up to the date of registration as a public violence offender. Using group-based models, we distinguished three criminal career trajectories in our sample. Although we found many public violence offenders had no criminal records whatsoever, we also found a small group of public violence offenders who exhibited a high frequency of offending, displayed both solo and group violence, and acted violently across different settings. Our results leave us to take a middle ground in the context-propensity debate, because we argue that different categories of public violence offenders may exist whose behaviour is triggered by different processes. Incorporating the notion of different types of public violence offenders helps explain the seemingly contradictory findings of prior studies, and suggests new avenues for future research into the intra- and intergroup dynamics of public violence.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Karystianis ◽  
Armita Adily ◽  
Peter Schofield ◽  
Lee Knight ◽  
Clara Galdon ◽  
...  

BACKGROUND Vast numbers of domestic violence (DV) incidents are attended by the New South Wales Police Force each year in New South Wales and recorded as both structured quantitative data and unstructured free text in the WebCOPS (Web-based interface for the Computerised Operational Policing System) database regarding the details of the incident, the victim, and person of interest (POI). Although the structured data are used for reporting purposes, the free text remains untapped for DV reporting and surveillance purposes. OBJECTIVE In this paper, we explore whether text mining can automatically identify mental health disorders from this unstructured text. METHODS We used a training set of 200 DV recorded events to design a knowledge-driven approach based on lexical patterns in text suggesting mental health disorders for POIs and victims. RESULTS The precision returned from an evaluation set of 100 DV events was 97.5% and 87.1% for mental health disorders related to POIs and victims, respectively. After applying our approach to a large-scale corpus of almost a half million DV events, we identified 77,995 events (15.83%) that mentioned mental health disorders, with 76.96% (60,032/77,995) of those linked to POIs versus 16.47% (12,852/77,995) for the victims and 6.55% (5111/77,995) for both. Depression was the most common mental health disorder mentioned in both victims (22.30%, 3258) and POIs (18.73%, 8918), followed by alcohol abuse for POIs (12.24%, 5829) and various anxiety disorders (eg, panic disorder, generalized anxiety disorder) for victims (11.43%, 1671). CONCLUSIONS The results suggest that text mining can automatically extract targeted information from police-recorded DV events to support further public health research into the nexus between mental health disorders and DV.


2021 ◽  
pp. 107780122110259
Author(s):  
Mandy Wilson ◽  
Erin Spike ◽  
George Karystianis ◽  
Tony Butler

Nonfatal strangulation (NFS) is a common form of domestic violence (DV) that frequently leaves no visible signs of injury and can be a portent for future fatality. A validated text mining approach was used to analyze a police dataset of 182,949 DV events for the presence of NFS. Results confirmed NFS within intimate partner relationships is a gendered form of violence. The presence of injury and/or other (non-NFS) forms of physical abuse, emotional/verbal/social abuse, and the perpetrator threatening to kill the victim, were associated with significantly higher odds of NFS perpetration. Police data contain rich information that can be accessed using automated methodologies such as text mining to add to our understanding of this pressing public health issue.


1962 ◽  
Vol 13 (5) ◽  
pp. 801 ◽  
Author(s):  
FW Hely

Four broad subgroups were recognized in the grey and brown soils of heavy texture in the Macquarie region of central New South Wales, and five annual species of Medicago (medics) were found occurring naturally on these soils, but with different frequencies on various subgroups. Some medic material was found in all quadrats on three subgroups and in nearly all fields and the majority of quadrats on the soils of the other. Medicago denticulata Willd. dominated one subgroup, occurring in all quadrats of all fields sampled. This species also occurred in approximately three quarters of the fields and half the quadrats sampled on two other subgroups, and was found in half the fields and a quarter of the quadrats of the fourth subgroup. Medicago minima (L.) Bart. showed a contrary preference, occurring with only slight frequency on the first, and with greatest frequency on the fourth subgroup. Medicago laciniata (L.) Mill. and Medicago tribuloides Desr. were of an intermediate nature and occurred principally on soils of the second and third subgroups. Medicago praecox DC. was found only on soils of the fourth subgroup and at low frequency. The nature of associations between medics showed that differences existed between subgroups of soils with respect to the preference of one species or another for them.


2020 ◽  
Vol 78 ◽  
pp. 101634
Author(s):  
Ye In Hwang ◽  
Lidan Zheng ◽  
George Karystianis ◽  
Vicki Gibbs ◽  
Kym Sharp ◽  
...  

10.2196/23725 ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (12) ◽  
pp. e23725
Author(s):  
George Karystianis ◽  
Annabeth Simpson ◽  
Armita Adily ◽  
Peter Schofield ◽  
David Greenberg ◽  
...  

Background The New South Wales Police Force (NSWPF) records details of significant numbers of domestic violence (DV) events they attend each year as both structured quantitative data and unstructured free text. Accessing information contained in the free text such as the victim’s and persons of interest (POI's) mental health status could be useful in the better management of DV events attended by the police and thus improve health, justice, and social outcomes. Objective The aim of this study is to present the prevalence of extracted mental illness mentions for POIs and victims in police-recorded DV events. Methods We applied a knowledge-driven text mining method to recognize mental illness mentions for victims and POIs from police-recorded DV events. Results In 416,441 police-recorded DV events with single POIs and single victims, we identified 64,587 events (15.51%) with at least one mental illness mention versus 4295 (1.03%) recorded in the structured fixed fields. Two-thirds (67,582/85,880, 78.69%) of mental illnesses were associated with POIs versus 21.30% (18,298/85,880) with victims; depression was the most common condition in both victims (2822/12,589, 22.42%) and POIs (7496/39,269, 19.01%). Mental illnesses were most common among POIs aged 0-14 years (623/1612, 38.65%) and in victims aged over 65 years (1227/22,873, 5.36%). Conclusions A wealth of mental illness information exists within police-recorded DV events that can be extracted using text mining. The results showed mood-related illnesses were the most common in both victims and POIs. Further investigation is required to determine the reliability of the mental illness mentions against sources of diagnostic information.


2018 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 102-107
Author(s):  
Madeleine Causbrook

This article argues that New South Wales (NSW) needs a domestic violence offence to criminally sanction controlling and coercive behaviour in relationships, and communicate that the harm particular to domestic violence deserves special recognition by the criminal law. It examines formulations of domestic abuse offences in domestic and international jurisdictions and suggests the merits of moving away from offences that focus on physical harm and subjective intention. Finally, a new domestic violence offence is proposed that is modelled on the UK's controlling or coercive behaviour offence, but more precisely defines ‘controlling’ and ‘coercive’ behaviours, and better accords with existing legislation.


Author(s):  
Harold Mytum

Mortuary monuments were used by Scots and Ulster Scots as they selectively chose to forget or remember their origins once they settled in new lands around the world. Those who moved to Pennsylvania in the eighteenth century and New South Wales in the nineteenth century employed different strategies regarding how they would create their identities and promote or discard aspects of their origins. Burial monument texts look back over the deceased’s life, but they are also selected by the living to create publicly visible family history and affiliation. Through both text and symbol on the memorials, families create visible, meaningful, biographies. Using survey data from Pennsylvania and New South Wales collected to investigate diasporic remembering and forgetting, this analysis recognises a widespread prevalence of forgetting and an increasing interest in creating new identities in the colonial context. However, some saw their origins as part of their identity and this formed part of the visible family biography.


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