Seeing the Whole Story: Violence, Mothers, and What New Technology Might Help Us Understand

In New Zealand, we often speak about violence against women and children as though it begins at the moment a charge is laid. A police investigation starts, a court file is opened, and the machinery of the justice system moves into place. From that point forward, the focus tends to narrow quickly to the immediate facts of the incident before the court.

But anyone who has spent time working alongside women affected by violence knows that by the time a case appears in a courtroom, the story is already well underway. The events that brought it there may have been unfolding for months or years, often in ways that are difficult for institutions to see in their entirety.

In my professional life as a litigation lawyer, I see these matters at one end of the spectrum. The issues arrive framed as legal disputes: criminal charges, applications for protection orders, contested parenting arrangements, and sentencing submissions. The law is necessarily concerned with evidence, with procedural fairness, and with the disciplined evaluation of what can be established to the required standard.

But through the WhoDidYouHelpToday Charitable Trust and its Mothers Project, I have also spent more than a decade sitting in NZ women’s prisons talking with mothers about the circumstances that led them there. Those conversations take place outside the formal structures of the courtroom. They are slower, often quieter, and less constrained by the evidential rules that shape legal proceedings.

Over time, a particular pattern becomes visible from that vantage point. Violence rarely arrives as a single event. It accumulates gradually across time and across institutions. One incident may appear in a police report. Another might surface in a Family Court affidavit filed months earlier. A third exists in a thread of text messages or social media communications. Other pieces of the story may sit with a social worker, a school, or a medical professional who has seen only a fragment of the overall picture.

The consequence is that the system responsible for responding to violence often sees only pieces of a much larger pattern. Each institution encounters the events through the particular lens of its own mandate and procedures. Police focus on whether a criminal offence has been committed. The Family Court must determine arrangements that serve the welfare and best interests of the child. Social agencies assess risk and support needs within their statutory frameworks.

Each of these functions is important and necessary. Yet the institutional separation between them can mean that the full context of what has occurred is not always visible in a single place.

This fragmentation is something we encounter regularly through the Mothers Project. Many of the women we meet have moved through several parts of the justice system before arriving in prison. There may have been police call-outs to family violence incidents. There may have been protection orders granted or breached. There may have been Family Court proceedings relating to children, sometimes running alongside criminal matters. In some cases, Oranga Tamariki has also been involved.

Yet these processes frequently unfold in parallel rather than in close conversation with one another. A judge in a criminal proceeding may see the immediate incident before the court without having ready access to the broader context of coercive control that preceded it. A Family Court judge may be grappling with parenting arrangements without full visibility of criminal proceedings involving the same parties. Lawyers often spend considerable time simply reconstructing the chronology of events across multiple files before they can begin to address the substantive issues.

For the women themselves, navigating this landscape can be extraordinarily difficult. Many are dealing simultaneously with trauma, addiction, unstable housing, and fractured relationships. Literacy challenges are common. Legal language and procedure can feel bewildering. Fear about losing contact with children frequently shapes how and whether women engage with the system at all.

Volunteer lawyers working within the Mothers Project often find that the most valuable part of their role is not complex legal strategy but something much more fundamental. It involves explaining what orders exist, what the various court processes mean, and what options might be available to maintain a safe connection with children. Those conversations can take time, but they are essential if women are to understand the legal environment surrounding their families.

It is against this backdrop that the current discussions about generative artificial intelligence in the justice system should be understood. Much of the debate has focused on the risks associated with these technologies. Courts internationally have already had to address situations where lawyers relied on AI systems that generated entirely fictitious case authorities. The caution with which the legal profession approaches these tools is therefore both understandable and necessary.

No one would sensibly suggest that algorithms should determine questions of liberty, safety, or parenting. Those decisions must remain firmly within the hands of human decision-makers who can weigh evidence, credibility, context, and compassion.

Yet if we step back from the immediate concerns about automation and ask a different question, another possibility emerges. The greatest challenge in many family violence matters is not a lack of legal principles. It is a lack of visibility across the full story.

Generative AI systems, for all their imperfections, are particularly good at identifying patterns within large volumes of information. They can assist with assembling chronologies, linking related documents, and highlighting connections that might otherwise remain obscured by the sheer volume of material involved.

Used carefully and under proper human supervision, such tools could help bring together the fragmented pieces of a family’s interaction with the justice system. They could assist in identifying when criminal proceedings and Family Court matters involve the same parties. They could summarise patterns of protection order breaches or repeated police call-outs. They could help lawyers and judges begin their work with a clearer overview of the history that has led to the present moment.

None of this replaces the exercise of human judgment. But it might mean that decision-makers are less likely to encounter each event in isolation.

There is another potential contribution that deserves attention. One of the most persistent barriers faced by many of the women we meet through the Mothers Project is the simple difficulty of understanding the legal processes surrounding them. The system is complex even for those who work within it. For someone navigating trauma, imprisonment, or separation from children, the complexity can be overwhelming.

Technology, if thoughtfully designed, could help bridge some of that gap. Digital tools could explain legal processes in plain language, guide people through the steps involved in particular applications, or help individuals organise the information they need to share with a lawyer or advocate. These kinds of tools would not replace professional advice. Rather, they would help people arrive at those conversations better informed and better able to participate in decisions affecting their lives.

Perhaps the most significant insight from the Mothers Project, however, lies in the recognition that violence against women rarely begins where the justice system first notices it. What eventually becomes visible to police or courts often sits at the end of a much longer trajectory. That trajectory may include patterns of control, intimidation, financial pressure, and threats relating to children. Each individual incident may appear relatively minor when viewed alone. Together, they form a pattern that can profoundly shape the lives of women and their families.

If new technologies can help institutions recognise those patterns earlier, the potential benefits extend well beyond procedural efficiency. Earlier recognition may enable earlier intervention, whether through protection orders, support services, or community-based responses that help stabilise families before situations escalate further.

Whenever we talk about mothers in the justice system, it is also impossible to ignore the children who stand just outside the frame of the courtroom. Children whose attachment relationships are disrupted when a parent enters prison. Children whose education and emotional stability are affected by the turmoil surrounding them. Children who carry the consequences of adult decisions long after the legal proceedings have ended.

Through initiatives like Storybook, the Mothers Project has seen how powerful it can be when mothers remain connected to their children even during imprisonment. Reading a book aloud and recording it for a child may appear a small act, but it strengthens bonds that are critical to both literacy and emotional wellbeing.

Those human connections sit at the heart of any meaningful response to violence and disadvantage. Technology cannot create them. It cannot replace the trust built between volunteers and mothers, or the resilience shown by families determined to rebuild their lives.

What technology may offer, if used wisely, is something more modest but still important. It may help the justice system see patterns that are currently obscured by the complexity of our institutions. It may help professionals understand the full story sooner rather than later. And sometimes, simply seeing the whole story is the first step toward responding to it more effectively.

The challenge, as always, will be to ensure that technological tools remain servants rather than masters of the human judgment that justice requires. If we approach them with humility, caution, and a clear understanding of the lives affected by our systems, they may yet help us respond to violence in ways that are more coherent, more compassionate, and ultimately more effective for the women and children whose futures depend on it