Making coercive control a crime
The Crimes (Coercive Control) Amendment Bill 2026 creates a criminal offence, or crime, for coercive control. This change will help recognise and respond to patterns of abusive behaviour in family and domestic relationships in criminal law.
The reform is part of a broader commitment to preventing domestic, family and sexual violence and improving support for victim survivors.
About the reform
Domestic and family violence almost always includes coercive control. Coercive control is a pattern of behaviour used to scare, isolate or control someone to take away their independence. It can happen without physical violence.
Examples of coercive control could include:
- telling someone who they can see, what they can wear, or where they can go
- watching or tracking what someone does and where they go
- sending abusive or threatening messages or images to someone
- controlling someone’s money, medicine, food or exercise
- threatening someone
- using a person’s culture, spirituality, religion or identity to control them
- sexual violence or pressuring someone into sexual activity.
The crime of coercive control will apply where:
- an adult engages in a pattern of family violence against a family member, and
- intends to coerce or control them, and
- a reasonable person would think the behaviour is likely to cause or make someone fear harm.
A family member includes partners, ex-partners, relatives and people connected through children. It also includes people someone has a family-like relationship with, even if they aren’t blood relatives.
The bill has measures in place to protect against unintended consequences from making coercive control a crime. Unintended consequences could include incorrectly charging someone or overusing criminal laws.
These measures include:
- requiring a pattern of behaviour, instead of a single incident
- requiring an intent to coerce or control
- limiting the crime to behaviour that is defined as family violence
- providing a defence of reasonableness, or looking at whether an ordinary, reasonable person would have acted this way
- requiring a statutory review of the coercive control offence after 3 years.
The bill also establishes a Coercive Control Advisory Committee. The committee will provide advice:
- on the enactment of the coercive control crime
- on what needs to be done before the proposed crime becomes law
- during the first year after coercive control is made a crime.
Why it’s important
Coercive control causes significant harm in relationships. It is often a part of cases where someone has hurt or killed their partner.
Coercive control has major impacts for victim-survivors and can affect every part of their life.
Making coercive control a crime:
- recognises the experiences of victim-survivors
- helps protect people through the law, even where there hasn’t been physical violence
- sends a clear message that controlling behaviour is not okay
- ensures people using coercive control will be held responsible.
Next steps
The Crimes (Coercive Control) Amendment Bill 2026 will become law after:
- it passes in the Legislative Assembly
- the ACT Legislation Register notifies it as an Act
- the Act commences.
The crime of coercive control will have a delayed commencement of two years. This is to make sure systems, services and workforces are ready for the change.
What we’ve achieved
The ACT Government established a steering committee to help guide the work for coercive control laws. The committee gave advice to government on how to make sure the law is safe, fair and informed by lived experience.
The government was also informed by those with lived experience through the Women’s Health Matters Victim Survivor Voices consultation and the report Too Urgent to Rush: Victim Survivor Voice consultation report for improving ACT justice system responses and community awareness of coercive control.
In mid-2025, a public campaign helped more people understand coercive control. Among ACT adults, understanding of the issue rose from 57% to 67%, showing the campaign’s impact.
To support frontline responses, government also gave funding to ACT Policing and ACT Courts to support training for their staff. The training aims to help them better identify and respond to coercive control.
The government is also updating the ACT Domestic and Family Violence Risk Assessment and Management Framework to better reflect coercive control and the complexity of non-physical abuse. Response services can use this Framework to identify, assess and respond to family violence in consistent and best practice ways.