Exploring Judicial Court-Craft in Sentencing Offenders for Intimate Partner Violence

This presentation is based on Dr Hudson’s PhD thesis, an empirical study exploring ‘court-craft’ in judicial communication of sentencing decisions to intimate partner violence offenders. The study addressed a research gap on the potential of therapeutic jurisprudence to be harnessed at this stage in the criminal justice response to family violence. In this study, Nina developed and employed an original analytical framework as a lens for conducting quantitative and qualitative analysis of sentencing comments by Tasmanian and Victorian magistrates and judges.

In this presentation, Nina explains the framework, which conceptualises judicial officers’ communication practices in delivering sentence as ‘communicative court-craft’. Further Nina discusses findings from the study. This includes exploration of the key qualities of communicative court-craft articulated through three dimensions in the framework and implications for policy objectives in responding to family violence, including addressing perpetrator accountability and improving community safety.

Presenter Bio:

Nina Hudson conducts legal and socio-legal empirical research using doctrinal, qualitative and quantitative methods, across multiple disciplines. With a background in law and criminology, Nina has 20 years of research, policy and law reform experience covering family, domestic and sexual violence, sentencing, criminology, mental health, disability and child safety and wellbeing.

Nina's doctorate in law, at the University of Tasmania, was an empirical study of judicial court-craft in communicating sentencing decisions to intimate partner violence offenders in Tasmanian and Victorian courts. Nina is a Senior Research Fellow at the Tasmania Law Reform Institute, University of Tasmania. Nina also works as an independent research consultant and is expert presenter for the National Judicial College of Australia on for its family violence judicial education program. Since 2016, Nina has been the editorial assistant for Psychiatry, Psychology and Law, and recently co-edited a special issue of the journal on judicial and lawyer wellbeing and stress (31(3) of 2024).