Violence against women: the forgotten epidemic
A “radical shift” is needed in the way we treat the “epidemic” of violence against women and girls, a major report on domestic violence has concluded today.
The watchdog report from Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) was commissioned by the Home Secretary in the wake of Sarah Everard’s murder in March. It was based on over 5,000 survey responses and interviews with victims, members of the public, police forces and practitioners.
Its findings make for sombre reading. On average, a woman is killed by a man every three days in the UK, and over 1.6 million female victims of domestic abuse were recorded in the year to March 2020. Four out of five victims of online abuse were women and girls, and almost 900,000 women were victims of stalking last year.
Roughly three-quarters of domestic abuse-related crimes reported to the police are closed without a charge – often because of “evidential difficulties” – and the “he-said-she-said” conundrum. As Zoe Billingham, the HM Inspector of Constabulary, puts it: “We understand that not every victim wants a prosecution but the proportion of cases closed is eye-wateringly high.”
The report makes several core recommendations to improve the situation. Perhaps the most straight forward is that tackling violence against women must be more of a national priority. Given the scale of the problem, it should be prioritised to the same degree as counter-terrorism, or tackling county line drug gangs, in which there is a “relentless pursuit” of offenders.
Failure to prioritise is evidenced in the Strategic Policing Requirement (SPR) – a vital document laying out the national threats that the police force must address. Crimes such as terrorism, serious and organised crime, large protests, child sexual abuse are all included on the SPR’s list of priorities, but violence against women and girls does not feature.
Better prioritisation inevitably means more funding. At present, Billingham argues, police are not giving the threat of violence against women the resources it deserves.
This isn’t to say progress hasn’t been made in recent years. On the contrary, the report says there have been vast improvements in safeguarding measures since 2016. Yet crucially, the progress hasn’t been evenly distributed across the country. When it comes to response to domestic violence, there are “staggering variations” between police forces within England and Wales. Support for victims amounts to something like a postcode lottery.
According to the report, levels of prosecutions vary enormously between forces with no apparent explanation and there are huge inconsistencies in how individual forces use the Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme (DVDS) – otherwise known as Clare’s Law.
Clare’s Law was established in 2014 to protect people deemed to be at risk of violence from a partner. It enables members of the public to request information from the police on a partner’s criminal history and it allows police to make a proactive decision to disclose information on a person’s criminal history to protect a potential victim.
While some police have used Clare’s Law effectively, the report found huge delays and unexplained gaps between requests and disclosures in other forces. In the year to March 2021, fewer than two fifths of “right to ask” DVDS applications made by concerned members of the public resulted in disclosure to a potential victim.
As George Eustice, the environment secretary, puts it: “The report highlights that some [police forces] are doing far better than others.” Going forwards, we need to “replicate those approaches that work in parts of the country.”
Ultimately though, as Billingham herself recognises, there is a limit to how much police reform can achieve. “We can’t just police our way out of this – these offences are deep rooted,” she said today. Instead, we need a cross-system approach to solve these issues, involving police but also health and social care, justice agencies, local authorities and education.