Before the First Charge

Domestic violence perpetrated by men is a significant public health and public safety issue in Canada. While governments have invested heavily in victim protection, emergency response and justice system interventions, most policies and programs continue to focus on responding after violence has been reported to or detected by the criminal justice system. This paper argues that meaningful opportunities exist to intervene much earlier before violence becomes entrenched, escalates in severity or results in criminal charges.

Patterns of police contact before men are charged with domestic violence reveal distinct developmental trajectories that can be identified years before a domestic violence offence occurs. Understanding these trajectories provides an opportunity to strengthen primary prevention by identifying earlier intervention points and shifting the focus from responding to violence after it occurs to preventing it before it starts. The analysis is based on an expanded longitudinal dataset provided by the Calgary Police Service, spanning January 2017 through December 2023. The study follows 3,846 adult men who received their first criminal charge for domestic violence against a female intimate partner and examines their prior patterns of police contact before the index offence.

The characteristics of these incidents remained remarkably consistent across the seven-year study period. Approximately three-quarters of offences involved a spouse or girlfriend, and nearly two-thirds of couples were living together at the time of the incident. Physical force was used in 73 per cent of cases, while 70 per cent resulted in injuries to the victim. Children were present or witnessed the violence in 42 per cent of incidents, highlighting the broader impact of domestic violence on children and families. The analysis identified four distinct groups of perpetrators based on their history of police contact before their first criminal domestic violence charge. At one end of the spectrum, 39 per cent of men had no previous police contact. At the other, 21 per cent had extensive criminal histories combined with repeated non-criminal domestic conflict incidents. Despite these differences, each group followed stable and identifiable developmental trajectories over time.