Five suspected domestic violence deaths in New South Wales this month have exposed a critical flaw in the state's intervention framework: most offenders aren't on police radar before they kill. Four people, including three women and a child, died in suspected domestic violence attacks in the space of 24 hours last weekend. Police said none of the alleged offenders were known to them. By Thursday, that number had climbed to five after a one-year-old stabbed in the Blue Mountains died in hospital.
The latest Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research results show more than 38,800 domestic violence-related assaults in the 12 months to June 26, up 3.4 per cent over the past decade. Domestic Violence Death Review Team data shows that since 2000, 351 women, 230 men and 137 children have been killed in domestic violence-related homicides in NSW.
The Information Gap
Macquarie University criminologist and former police detective Vince Hurley said the assumption that police know who's dangerous is fundamentally wrong. "This notion that police always know who the offender is, is a bit of a misconception," he said. "I would say probably 75 per cent, if not more, of domestic violence offenders are not known by police."
Hurley pointed to privacy regulations that prevent critical information sharing between agencies. "It might be known to health officials, such as hospitals or GPs, but that information is not necessarily passed on to police because of privacy regulations," he said. "It's impossible to police what you don't know."
He identified three key underlying issues after reviewing hundreds of cases: alcohol, drugs and mental health. Untreated mental health conditions contribute to offending, but services remain out of reach for most. "Most people who are wealthy might be able to afford to make a psychologist appointment and pay $300 an hour," he said. "But for the bulk of the population, particularly in low socio-economic demographics, that is just not an option to them."
The Funding Imbalance
General manager Chris Lacey of the national peak body No to Violence said just 3.6 per cent of national domestic violence funding goes to early intervention. The system focuses heavily on helping victim survivors but doesn't invest in engaging men earlier. "That's the space where we need to be stepping into," he said. "When someone at a hospital has a man present and they can identify that this man is at risk of committing or being violent, that there is a referral pathway directly from there for that man to get to tap in to services."
Those services are very hard to find and very hard to get into, he said. "We need to be filling that massive gap."
The NSW Domestic Violence Death Review Team, which analysed more than 20 years of domestic violence homicides in a report tabled in parliament in 2024, found two in three women killed were killed by an ex-partner or at the point of separating from their partner. Three-quarters of the men who killed a female partner had used three or more different types of domestic violence against her during the relationship, behaviour that is often controlling rather than physical.
Coercive Control Law Shows Limited Impact
Coercive control became a criminal offence in NSW in July 2024. According to BOCSAR's latest coercive-control data, police have recorded 682 incidents since the offence was criminalised, and 42 charges have been laid. The report found nearly half the victims, 47 per cent, had a prior history of domestic violence recorded by police, and 31 per cent had previously experienced domestic violence involving the same alleged offender.
NSW Mental Health Minister Rose Jackson said it's important to distinguish between antisocial behaviour and people suffering from mental ill health. "Failing to do so may inadvertently diminish the personal responsibility of those who perpetrate violence. It also risks unfairly stigmatising people living with genuine mental ill health," she said.
Lacey said early warning signs of escalating behaviours can emerge during visits to a GP, hospital or other services. "There are signs around drinking heavily, or going through a major life event, which can put more pressures on them," he said. "That is generally a critical opportunity to identify the risk that exists and try to intervene before it escalates." He said men who recognised those patterns in themselves could act on them. "It's up to us as men to seek that help when we feel we need it, that is really important," he said.
Hurley said families often notice something's wrong first, but noticing isn't the same as being able to fix it. "It's OK for members of the family to look at the nuanced behaviour of members having a mental health episode, but that isn't easily equated into solving the problem," he said.
Domestic Violence NSW CEO Delia Donovan said getting various government departments talking to each other was a key part of the solution. "We need to make sure anyone responding to anyone impacted by domestic violence … really understands the nuance of domestic and family violence and it has to sit within every organisation's work plan," she said. She said this included sporting codes, schools, corporate businesses and early childhood centres. "We still don't have a society that really understands domestic and family violence, and we still have a society that victim-blames," she said. "Until we can all look inwardly, government top-down, all the way through to community, we won't change this."
Donovan said there had been 52 women killed this year and that without proper resourcing, "we're not going to touch the sides of it."
Why This Matters:
The revelation that 75 per cent or more of domestic violence offenders aren't known to police before they commit serious crimes suggests that NSW's current approach—focused overwhelmingly on victim support after violence occurs—misses the intervention window entirely. With only 3.6 per cent of national funding directed at early intervention, the system effectively waits for tragedy rather than preventing it. Privacy regulations prevent hospitals, GPs and other frontline services from sharing critical warning signs with police, creating information silos that leave dangerous individuals unmonitored. The coercive control law, two years old, has produced just 42 charges despite 682 recorded incidents, raising questions about whether legislative solutions can work without the infrastructure to identify offenders before they escalate. The mental health service gap—where private care costs $300 an hour—leaves low-income individuals, the demographic most represented in these cases, without treatment options that might prevent violence.