KEY POINTS:
Flagship specialist family violence courts in Manukau and Waitakere have failed to reduce reoffending rates, throwing doubts over plans to set up more such courts throughout the country.
Evaluations by the Ministry of Justice and Massey University have found that reoffending within a year of a court appearance for family violence in Manukau actually increased from 7 per cent to 11 per cent after the specialist court was set up in 2005.
There was a slight drop in reoffending in Waitakere, where the specialist court was set up in 2001. But the drop from 11 per cent to 9 per cent was too small to be statistically significant.
The evaluations have also found:
* Victims have been put at risk in the specialist courts by waiting in common waiting rooms with their abusers and being questioned by judges in open court in front of their partners.
* The Manukau court has been overwhelmed by the volume of cases and has failed to deal with cases as fast as planned.
* Manukau judges have almost stopped facilitating protection orders, leaving offenders unmonitored while they attend a non-violence course until a next court appearance months later.
* Non-violence programmes have not been funded for offenders who "self-refer" before sentencing.
Chief District Court Judge Russell Johnson, who drove the creation of the Manukau court while serving there until 2005, said yesterday that the problems had been tackled since the evaluators observed the courts in 2006-2007. He spent a week in the Manukau Family Violence Court last month to see the situation for himself after reading the evaluations, and said a "cap" of 35 cases a day had been imposed to give judges time to deal with all offenders carefully.
But Manukau barrister Catriona MacLennan said there were still 85 cases on the Family Violence Court list on July 24 and 82 on August 1.
"They have been completely overwhelmed by the volume of cases," she said. "I have also been very concerned by the use of 'therapeutic justice' by judges in the Family Violence Courts."
The specialist courts work on the basis that the couples involved in 80 per cent of domestic violence cases want to stay together, so the courts aim to get the offenders into non-violence programmes.
Offenders are not allowed to plead at their first appearance, and are encouraged to plead guilty so that they can attend a programme - either by court order or by "self-referral", usually offered by a lawyer, while on remand until their next court appearance.
But Ms MacLennan said: "A therapeutic approach can be a very easy solution for the court - you send a man to anger management, he comes back later and says he's done the programme, and the assumption is that everything is fine.
"That is really selling the woman and children short. We need to give them the resources to separate and get out of these violent relationships ... "
Courts Minister Rick Barker said the reoffending rates should be interpreted cautiously because of factors outside the courts' control. "For example, increased reconviction rates could indicate greater reporting of family violence by victims ... "
