Considering Criminalisation of Coercive Control in Aotearoa New Zealand: A necessary discussion

The importance of discussion

A sincere thank you to  Shine NZ and Women's Refuge NZ for your recent discussion regarding the criminalisation of coercive control Should coercive control be a crime in New Zealand? - Shine it has raised important questions about how Aotearoa New Zealand should respond to one of the most pervasive and damaging forms of family violence. These conversations are both necessary and valuable. Legislative reform should never be pursued lightly, and the concerns voiced by advocates, practitioners, researchers, and survivors must always be carefully considered. However, it is equally important that the broader context of the work already underway is understood.

What is Coercive Control?

The criminalisation of coercive control is not a knee jerk policy proposal. It is the result of years of growing evidence, survivor experiences, international research, and increasing recognition that existing legal frameworks often struggle to capture patterns of abuse that do not leave visible injuries but can and measurably do, profoundly devastate a person's safety, autonomy, and wellbeing.  “Coercive control creates invisible chains and a sense of fear that pervades all elements of a victim’s life. It works to limit their human rights by depriving them of their liberty and reducing their ability for action’”,  Womens Aid UK what-is-domestic-abuse/coercive-control/.  

At its core, coercive control is a dignity and liberty crime - “Coercive control is an attack on a person’s dignity”, Coercive control and entrapment - Shine.  It is not simply a collection of isolated incidents, but a pattern of behaviours-violence/abuse/harm/tactics designed to dominate, intimidate, isolate, and entrap another person – “Coercive control is a deliberate, strategic pattern of behaviour that aims to limit another person's autonomy, self-determination and liberty”, Coercive control | Practice Centre | Oranga Tamariki. It is clearly defined in Section 9(3)(a, b)the Family Violence Act 2018 but not criminalised.  It can include physical violence, psychological abuse, financial control, technological abuse, stalking, threats, manipulation of systems etc, and other tactics that systematically erode a person's freedom. The ultimate purpose is control, achieved through fear, dependency, and the removal of autonomy.

Who experiences Coercive Control?

While it is critical to acknowledge that women are disproportionately affected by severe family violence and are more likely to experience serious injury or death at the hands of intimate partners, a truly effective response to coercive control must also recognise the experiences of all victims, of all ages and of all demographics – tāne, children, rainbow, disabled persons, older persons, pets, and cults/groups etc.  To ensure an equitable legal and safety response, we should include intrafamilial relationships -step, siblings, child-parent, aunty-uncles, grandparents-children, and according to the Family Violence Act 2018 - caregivers and domestic relationships etc.  All age groups, and individuals from diverse cultural backgrounds can also experience coercive control.

Family violence does not always fit neatly into a single narrative, and neither should our understanding of it.

An all-of-gender approach does not in any way diminish the experiences of women. Rather, it strengthens our collective understanding of family violence by ensuring that no victim is overlooked. Safety should never be determined by gender alone. Instead, responses should be informed by evidence, risk assessment, patterns of harm, and the lived realities of those experiencing abuse.

Cross jurisdictional lessons learnt

Some critics of criminalisation point to challenges experienced overseas, including concerns about misidentifying victims as perpetrators or the potential for inconsistent enforcement. These concerns absolutely deserve attention. However, they also highlight an important distinction: many of these failures have not been failures of legislation itself but failures of education, training, implementation, and institutional understanding.  “I just see it as an essential … If we don’t mature our models of managing domestic violence because we fear the police won’t do their job or systems are going to fail us, then we’re looking at it from the wrong perspective. We need to be addressing the failures in our systems so they can keep people safe”. (Eliza, 51–60, D, NSW) and “For these victim-survivors, the criminalisation of coercive control was viewed as an opportunity to raise community awareness of the unacceptability of non-physical forms of IPV, to enhance the availability of help-seeking avenues for victim-survivors, to improve safety outcomes and to increase access to justice”- The criminalisation of coercive control: A national study of victim-survivors’ views on the need for, benefits, risks and impacts of criminalisation

Most importantly, it is about creating a system that better recognises, responds to, and protects all victims of coercive control in the context of family violence.  “As a growing number of jurisdictions are recognizing the need to enact legislation addressing coercive control, it is vital that lessons are learnt from the experiences of the jurisdictions which were amongst the first to draft such legislation.” Criminalizing Coercive Control: Cross-Jurisdictional Lessons | Statute Law Review | Oxford Academic. 

But it is important to centre the fact that legislation alone is never enough. Any future criminalisation of coercive control must be accompanied by education, increasing workforce capability, public awareness, judicial training, and specialist practice development.

What is already being done in Aotearoa New Zealand?

Significant work is already underway in these areas. Independent research has been commissioned to examine lessons learned from international jurisdictions that have criminalised coercive control. The purpose of this work is not to copy overseas models but to identify their strengths and weaknesses so that Aotearoa can develop legislation that reflects its own context and avoids what is known to be harmful.

In New Zealand, awareness raising concepts have been introduced. The Police concepts of "Primary Victim" and "Predominant Aggressor" were developed to shift thinking beyond simplistic incident-based family violence response to calls for service. These frameworks encourage officers to examine the broader context of abuse, including patterns of harm (episodic nature of family violence - NZ Police - episodes-not-incidents-handout-web.pdf), victim resistance, self-protection strategies, and the cumulative history of violence within relationships. Each episode forms part of a larger pattern that may reveal ongoing coercion, intimidation, and control.   Rather than viewing family violence as a single event, practitioners are encouraged to understand it as a continuum of behaviour.  So, for practice purposes the concept that sits behind the terminology primary victim is important to understand - Primary Victim or Victim-Survivor? Context Matters.  

When these principles are properly understood and applied, the likelihood of misidentifying primary victims can be significantly reduced.  And if these concepts are not properly understood further education is required.

NZ Police and Ara Poutama have already recognised the need for further awareness of coercive control and have recently and proactively had specialist coercive control training developed for their kaimahi.  These initiatives demonstrate recognition that understanding patterns of coercion is necessary to support effective response. Building capability before legislation is introduced is not only prudent but necessary.

Since 2022, The wider family violence workforce, government and non-government, have also been engaged in extensive training initiatives aligned with the national Family Violence Essential to Expert Capability Framework - Entry-to-Expert-FV-Workforce-Capability-Frameworks-Jan-2023.pdf.   Thousands of frontline responders, practitioners, social workers, advocates, and community organisations have received specialist education focused on coercive control, primary victim resistance, risk analysis, documentation, referral pathways, and trauma-informed responses. This investment reflects an understanding that meaningful change requires a knowledgeable and confident workforce capable of recognising complex abuse dynamics.

Pattern Based legislation already in Aotearoa

There is also value in recognising that New Zealand has already demonstrated an ability to develop pattern-based legislation. The introduction of stalking and harassment legislation Crimes Legislation (Stalking and Harassment) Amendment Act 2025 | New Zealand Legislation and Litigation Abuse legislation – systemic coercion - Victims of Family Violence (Strengthening Legal Protections) Legislation Act 2025 No 2, Public Act – New Zealand Legislation illustrates how legal frameworks can respond to ongoing behavioural patterns rather than isolated incidents. Early implementation successes suggest that when legislation is supported by training, awareness, and clear operational guidance, meaningful outcomes can be achieved. 

At the same time, concerns raised by victim-survivors about current ineffective responses must not be dismissed. Too many survivors continue to report feeling unheard, misunderstood, or inadequately protected. These experiences are real and must remain central to any reform process. The solution, however, is not to abandon efforts to criminalise coercive control. Rather, it is to ensure that criminalisation occurs alongside comprehensive education, accountability, social, sectoral and cultural change across systems.

The pursuit of safety for our primary victims/victim survivors should never become a competition between priorities. Family violence reform, family justice reform, survivor advocacy, prevention initiatives, and the criminalisation of coercive control all share the same fundamental goal: increasing safety and reducing harm. These efforts are not competing agendas, nor should they ever be. They are interconnected pieces of a larger response to family violence.

Collaboration and partnership must remain at the heart of this work. Organisations may and should approach the issue through different lenses, but those differences should be viewed as strengths rather than divisions.

Establishment of the Criminalisation of Coercive Control Aotearoa New Zealand (CoCCANZ)

COCCANZ was founded in 2026 by ECLIPSE Family Violence Services and will be launched in 2027.  The establishment of the CoCCANZ Steering group brings together cross sectoral specialists, stakeholders, survivors, and diverse sector representatives to create opportunities for informed discussion, robust scrutiny, and collective ownership of future developments. Effective reform cannot occur in isolation, it requires partnership, and CoCCANZ has brought these diverse pockets of knowledge together and are actively moving towards public launch.

And so, the criminalisation of coercive control is not simply about creating a new offence. It is a deeply considered decision to support more effective recognition of patterns of abuse that has for too long remained unseen. It is about ensuring that patterns of domination, entrapment, and fear are identified before they escalate to serious injury, homicide, suicide, homicide-suicide, and/or familicide.

In the end, this is not any single individual or organisation's work. It is our work, our collective work. Through collaboration, education, evidence-informed practice, and a commitment to safety for all, Aotearoa New Zealand can develop an appropriately informed, and researched response to coercive control that honours every victim while building a stronger, safer future for everyone.

ECLIPSE Family Violence Services - Relational Environment of Coercive Control Wheel ©