Visualising violence? Capturing and critiquing body-worn video camera evidence of domestic and family violence

Abstract

Heralded as an evidentiary ‘game changer’, body-worn video cameras (BWVCs) have recently been utilised by justice agents in domestic and family violence (DFV) responses. Proponents assert that BWVC footage can: strengthen evidential cases; improve the probability of guilty pleas or convictions; reduce State expenditure; and bolster police accountability and perceptions of procedural justice. There has been little consideration of how BWVCs might shape victim/survivor experiences of the justice system. In this article, I discuss (and foreground) missing voices on BWVCs, drawing on a project completed with Australian female victim/survivors. I unpack issues that women have flagged as important; whether or not BWVC footage might prompt reviews of police actions and failures to act, serve their best interests and impact their journey through the justice system. Exploring interdisciplinary literature and police and judicial statements in public discourse, I examine expectations about how women present and understandings of the dynamics and effects of DFV. Questioning claims that BWVCs provide neutral footage, I contend that representations are subject to interpretation, governed by practical, ideological and social standpoints, biases and constraints. To study BWVC evidence we must consider the media, the incident-based focus of BWVCs and the relationality between image and spectator.