Submission to: The Statutory Review of the NSW Coercive Control Law (Part 3, Division 6A of the Crimes Act 1900)

The submission argues that criminalisation alone is insufficient to address coercive control, and that systemic failures in police culture, practice, and the justice system undermine the reform's effectiveness:

Police implementation: Officers continue to treat coercive control as isolated incidents rather than a pattern of conduct; financial abuse is routinely dismissed as a "civil matter" or "credit and debt issue" rather than a form of domestic and family violence.  

Legislative gaps: The mental element requires intention, which is an "insurmountable hurdle" especially in financial abuse cases; the offence is limited to intimate partners; and there is no clear statutory definition of economic and financial abuse.

Training failure: Despite substantial investment, training has not translated into consistent frontline practice; success should be measured by changes in police behaviour, not completion numbers.

Systemic support gaps: Victim-survivors lack access to specialist interdisciplinary services, and the Victim Support Scheme does not adequately cover non-physical forms of coercive control.

Eleven recommendations call for extending the mental element to include recklessness (but only after safeguards are in place), broadening the offence to all domestic relationships (but only after evidence of safe implementation), defining economic and financial abuse with expanded examples, strengthening police monitoring and guidance, and investing in specialist support services.