Identifying Controlling Behaviors in Police Reports for Intimate Partner Violence: Implications for Risk Assessment

Abstract Purpose Practitioners and policy makers increasingly recognize controlling behaviors as forms of intimate partner violence (IPV) and potential indicators of risk of further harm. Accordingly, several countries have criminalized coercive control—the systematic use of controlling behaviors over time—in legislation and included controlling behaviors in risk assessment instruments for IPV. However, both intervening to prevent coercive control and using evidence of controlling behaviors to inform risk judgements depend on the identification of coercive control, particularly by frontline police officers. Method We examined 1,158 New Zealand Police reports for IPV episodes to (a) identify whether officers recorded evidence of controlling behaviors, and (b) determine if those controlling behaviors improved predictions of IPV recurrence and physical recurrence within 24 weeks, over and above New Zealand Police’s existing static risk assessment instrument. Results We identified at least one form of controlling behavior in almost half of reports—with the most common forms including isolating control (25.4%) and threatening control (18.7%)—and all controlling behaviors were recorded at similar rates for aggressors who were men ( n = 948) versus women ( n = 210). Including controlling behaviors (specifically, economic control) led to small improvements in the prediction of recurrence overall, and for men and women aggressors. For men, adding controlling behaviors did not improve prediction of physical recurrence; whereas no models predicted physical recurrence for women. Conclusions Our findings provide a small degree of support for including controlling behaviors—particularly economic control—in IPV risk assessment instruments for estimating risk of ongoing harm, but not its form. There is a need for further examination of how controlling behaviors manifest in different forms of family and intimate relationships, including where women are aggressors.