Legal Response To Domestic Violence Offenders

Research Design
Despite recent reforms to the legal response to domestic violence, available data on the effectiveness of domestic violence protection orders is limited (Young, Byles & Dobson, 2000). In addition to this, the personal characteristics, such as age, marital status, education and mental health of domestic violence offenders is also limited with no available data on the reasons why domestic violence offenders breach domestic violence orders and why these offenders are not deterred by the legal ramifications of breaching a domestic violence protection order. This research design will seek to gain a deeper understanding of the characteristics of offenders who breach domestic violence protection orders and why the legal ramifications
An advantage of conducting face to face interviews is that any issues surrounding illiteracy will be avoided, this is particularly relevant in a prison setting where inmates have a higher than average level of illiteracy. A series of five closed questions will be used, followed by five open questions at the end of the interview. The closed questions will cover offender characteristics such as age, marital status, children, education, and whether or not the offender witnessed parental violence as a child. The open questions will be asking about prior criminal convictions, diagnosed mental health conditions, if the offender has any remorse for their actions, if the offender felt in control of their actions at the time of the offence and whether or not the offender considered the legal ramifications of their actions at the time of the offence. The closed questions will be a combination of yes/no answers and multiple choice options. The options for each multiple choice answer aim to cover all possibilities of response. The list of questions can be seen in Appendix 1. The closed questions will be asked first, followed by the open questions to give the offender the opportunity to expand or divulge any additional information relating to their offence. The responses from the open questions will be analysed and coded by any reoccurring themes in the responses, this is also commonly referred to as thematic analysis. This will identify if any patterns exist or if there are any notable similarities in the characteristics of domestic violence offenders and their offences. An advantage of semi structured interviews is that the researcher can prepare the questions ahead of time and be organised and prepared to produce reliable, comparable data (Bryman, 2016). The participants also have the capacity and the freedom to respond to the questions on