Adolescent family violence in Victoria

The Royal Commission into Family Violence noted that there is limited information surrounding the prevalence and characteristics of adolescent family violence (AFV) in Victoria. This data report investigates Victoria Police, Court Family Violence Intervention Order and Victoria Youth Justice data to provide a summary about police reported AFV incidents, and examine historical and situational risk factors which may impact an adolescent's propensity for family violence behaviour. Adolescent's future contact with justice system entities are also examined to investigate short-term (5 year) outcomes following their first police reported incident.

Key findings include:

• The number of adolescent family violence (AFV) incidents recorded by police has increased 11.8% over the past five years.
• Intimate partner violence is the fastest growing type of AFV, increasing 21.2% from 2014-15 to 2018-19.
• The rate of AFV was twice as high in regional or rural Victoria compared with major cities.
• Over half of adolescent aggressors of family violence had prior contact with police as a witness or victim-survivor of a family violence incident, or with courts as a protected person on a Family Violence Intervention Order.
• Most young people (80%) go on to have some kind of future contact with the justice system following their first AFV aggressor incident, with 52% recorded as an aggressor at a subsequent family violence incident. Over half of aggressors also had subsequent involvement with police or courts as a victim of crime, a victim-survivor of family violence or as a complainant on a family violence intervention order.