Thursday, 15 August 2019

In reply to  Ms MAXWELL (Northern Victoria) (6 June 2019)

Mr CARROLL (Niddrie—Minister for Crime Prevention, Minister for Corrections, Minister for Youth Justice, Minister for Victim Support):

The Andrews Labor Government provided $1.6 million to the Centre for Forensic Behavioural Science at Swinburne University of Technology to establish the Catalyst Consortium. The establishment of Catalyst was part of the response to the Harper review and will improve our understanding of what causes repeat violent and sexual offending to help authorities better manage offenders and ensure community safety.

Prior research in this area has typically focussed on identifying individual factors that correlate with violent crime (such as substance use and mental illness), rather than examining the causal processes that underlie these factors. Consequently, violent behaviour remains poorly understood and assessment and intervention methods are underdeveloped.

In contrast, the work of the Catalyst Consortium will improve the body of knowledge about dynamic risk factors impacting on complex criminal behaviours, violence and mental disorders, including how these factors need to be monitored and addressed to reduce the likelihood of further offending. This will assist Government to focus our investments on the most cost-effective interventions.

While the Catalyst Consortium has a national remit, our funding means that much of the research is focused specifically on offenders in Victoria. To date, two projects involving direct partnership with Corrections Victoria have been completed and six are underway, for completion over the next two years. These all have a statewide rather than regional focus, in terms of strengthening our understanding of this cohort of serious offenders, and on what interventions work best.

Publicly available reports can be found on the Catalyst Consortium website http://catalystconsortium.com/.

To date, these include:

• Summary report: Effectiveness of psychological treatments for violent offenders in custodial, community and forensic mental health settings: A systematic review and meta-analysis (July 2018).

• Summary report: The Challenge of Predicting Imminent Sexual and Violent Offending (August 2018).

We are currently working through any required changes to practice to reflect the outcomes of this research.