2000, Practising Interagency Partnerships to Reduce Violence Against Women. Paper presented at the conference ‘Reducing Criminality

This paper aims to present the concept of prevention of violence against women as part and parcel of the holistic concept of reducing criminality in the society or state, as well as demonstrating how interagency partnerships could work towards this. I will be using some of my projects as examples to discuss the practicalities of adopting such an approach. The discussion of this approach within the framework of the NSW Strategy to Reduce Violence Against Women makes it very relevant to the work that I am currently engaged in. The ideal meeting point will be prevention of violence against women by interagency partnerships operating within feminist frameworks.1 But to what extent has it been practically possible to achieve this? This paper attempts to find an answer to that question. Background Crime and violence, and fear of crime and violence are major concerns for many communities. Traditionally the police and the criminal justice system had been generally reactive in their responses, dealing with crime after it had been committed, and it had worked reasonably well. However more recently crime levels have increased, compared to what they were a few decades ago, and our society has become even more complex. (First Re ort of the Enquiry int