NSW police recorded 473 coercive control incidents in 18 months and laid 22 charges

New South Wales police recorded 473 incidents of coercive control in the first 18 months of the state's new offence, and 22 charges were laid over the same period. That is the finding of the quarterly monitoring report published by the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research on 18 March 2026, covering 1 July 2024 to 31 December 2025. As at 31 December 2025, one charge had been proven, by guilty plea, and the offender received an intensive correction order. Four had been withdrawn by the prosecution. Seventeen were still before the courts.

The offence sits at section 54D of the Crimes Act 1900 and commenced on 1 July 2024. It applies to a course of abusive conduct directed at a current or former intimate partner with the intention of coercing or controlling them, and only to behaviour occurring from that date. The NSW Department of Communities and Justice says the government put $5.6 million into initial police training and established an Implementation and Evaluation Taskforce to advise the minister.

The incidents police did record are not thin. The report counts an average of four distinct controlling behaviours per incident. Harassment, monitoring or tracking appeared in 56 per cent, threats or intimidation in 53 per cent, financial abuse in 52 per cent, and shaming, degrading or humiliating conduct in 46 per cent. Physical violence was present in 30 per cent and sexual violence in 17 per cent. In 59 per cent of events, other offences were recorded alongside the coercive control, most often intimidation or stalking (35 per cent) and domestic violence assault (34 per cent).

The gap between incidents and charges is the report's most striking figure. Across 476 coercive control events, 268, or 56.3 per cent, produced no charge of any type. A further 186 events, 39.1 per cent, produced charges for other offences but not for coercive control. Only two events produced a coercive control charge alone. Of the 22 charges, 11 were laid by NSW Police and 11 initiated by the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, and four arose from domestic violence events in which police had not recorded a coercive control incident at all. The median time from the recorded event to the charge was 188 days.

The demography is consistent. Ninety four per cent of victims were female and 92 per cent of incidents involved a female victim and a male alleged offender. Eight per cent of victims were Aboriginal. Seventy six per cent of victims were the current or former spouse of the alleged offender, and 36 per cent were aged 30 to 39. All 22 people legally proceeded against were male, 19 were non Aboriginal, and 16 were aged between 30 and 49.

Almost half of the victims were already known to police as victims of domestic and family violence. Forty seven per cent, or 222 people, had a prior recorded victimisation, and 31 per cent, or 145, had one involving the same alleged offender. Of those 145, 28 per cent had at least three prior records against that offender. Twenty three per cent of victims had an apprehended domestic violence order in force at the time of the incident, and 56 per cent had one commence afterwards.

Geography splits sharply. Regional New South Wales recorded 289 incidents at 9.9 per 100,000 people, against 184 in Greater Sydney at 3.3 per 100,000. The Eastern Suburbs recorded one incident in 18 months. Whether that reflects where coercive control happens or where it is recognised is not something the report resolves.

Recording is rising. The previous monitoring report, published on 19 December 2025 and covering the period to 30 September 2025, counted 386 incidents, 18 charges and three finalised matters. Quarterly incident counts moved from 72 in the September 2024 quarter to 94 in the December 2025 quarter.

How to read the low charge count is contested. Domestic Violence NSW, the peak body for more than 200 specialist services, said on 23 July 2026 that family violence remains deeply under reported, citing fear of retaliation, shame and poor justice system experiences, and reported services running at up to nine times funded capacity with 94 per cent of respondents seeing higher demand. ANROWS argued on 23 July 2026 that non physical abuse is itself a homicide risk factor and that treating only physical violence as real violence puts women at risk. The Australian Domestic and Family Violence Death Review Network's 2024 data report notes a different problem: coercive control uses individualised tactics that can appear benign to a third party, which makes it hard for services or coders to detect at all.

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare reported on 18 June 2026 that spouses or domestic partners were the perpetrator group with the highest rate of assault hospitalisation, 16.8 per 100,000 people, or 4,608 cases, and that intimate partners were most often responsible for female homicide deaths.

What is not yet known is whether 22 charges represents a law that is failing to reach conduct it was written for, or one being used cautiously while evidence practice is built. No evaluation from the Implementation and Evaluation Taskforce has been published. Seventeen prosecutions remain undecided, so there is no conviction rate to read. And no source consulted here quantifies how many of the 268 events that produced no charge involved conduct that would have met the section 54D test.