Articles & Reports

Annexure 1  -  Rethinking Primary Prevention

we need to fundamentally rethink our approach to primary prevention.

we need to think through questions of primary prevention especially carefully.  What is primary prevention? What does success look like? How can we hold ourselves accountable to victim-survivors, and to the public?

the Encyclopedia of Primary Prevention and Health Promotion defines  primary prevention involves activities  that:

a)   prevent negative or harmful outcomes

b)   protect healthy, safety and wellbeing, and

c)   promote improved outcomes for a population of people in three possible contexts:

            -  universally (as a basic utility for everyone’s benefit);

            -  selectively (for groups at risk); and

            -  for groups considered to be at very high risk (Bloom & Gulotta, 2014, p. 3).

Depending on the context and the problem, primary prevention may focus on the “total population”,

Even if we accept the current theory of change – that improvements to community attitudes will reduce gendered violence - it is clear, from the survey data we rely on to measure attitude change, that the strategy we have pursued for the past decade is showing limited, if any, success.

A primary prevention approach unable to engage with the messiness of different kinds of “normal” may preserve its ideological hygiene, but risks sacrificing impact and efficacy.

Our current primary prevention model outsources its results to future generations, and thus gives politicians the cover to adopt platitudes and evade accountability.

A recent survey asked more than 1100 victim survivors what they thought would help stop the violence. Four key responses emerged:

1.     A fear of the consequences

2.     Holding them to account

3.     Removing myself

4.     Nothing was helpful

As these victim survivors expressed, accountability can come in many forms – not just the criminal justice and civil protection system, although making those interventions effective and protective is critically important. We are seeing some targeted focused deterrence work in various states: NSW Police, for example, have been using a form of focused deterrence with Operation AMAROK, comprising multiple waves of ‘blitzes’ lasting four to five days, in which hundreds of high-risk and known domestic violence offenders are located and charged with Apprehended Domestic Violence Order breaches and any outstanding warrants. We need to be evaluating interventions like these, their impact on recidivism and the safety of victim survivors. We also need a strategy for engaging these offenders over the longer term, and where possible and appropriate, connecting them to therapeutic programs.

Key to ensuring accountability for perpetrators is making systems accountable, too. The sector and survivor advocates have been campaigning for years for greater accountability and oversight over police, child protection and the family law system. Perpetrator accountability will only be possible when the systems that respond to them are accountable, too.

We need a coordinated model of prevention that targets multiple levels and forms of risk simultaneously; that is calibrated to the scale of need; that is adaptive to signals and feedback from the frontline; and that responds to new evidence as it emerges.

Primary prevention is not limited to universal strategies. It is not limited to whole-of-population interventions. Primary prevention is, quite simply, anything that reduces the level of violence against women and children.

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