SafeLives welcomes today’s publication of Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) (HMIC) on the police response to violence against women and girls. This is the most detailed report on policing of these issues since the ground-breaking report by HMIC – Everyone’s Business – in 2014.
This important report highlights an overwhelming epidemic of violence which is harming women and girls every day – and a system which too often fails them.
We welcome the overarching finding that a whole system approach and radical change are needed to stop this epidemic in its tracks. We agree that violence against women and girls must be afforded at least the same status as other high-harm crimes and addressed and resourced accordingly – with clear strategy, consistent and robust evidence-based practice, effective training, good multi-agency partnership working, and sustainable funding, particularly for the specialist services which provide vital support to victims and survivors and challenge perpetrators of abuse to change. 4 out of 5 victims never call the police – so we also welcome the HMIC acknowledgement that police response has to sit in a wider societal and systemic approach.
We support the call for a new statutory duty to tackle violence against women and girls. We need a new framework that mandates that all relevant agencies work together and share accountability for preventing abuse in the first place. And the report recognises the critical need to join up responses around the family, not just work in siloes and to multiple different thresholds around adults and children. This leaves gaps, and it leaves people at risk. We are working with local partners across the country on a whole family approach and will publish findings from that work in a few weeks’ time.
We also welcome the focus on tackling the perpetrators of abuse. For far too long, we have asked ‘why doesn’t she just leave?’ instead of ‘why doesn’t he stop?’* We know from our work as part of the Drive Partnership with Respect and Social Finance that challenging perpetrator behaviour can identify and stop harmful behaviour.
Despite clear progress in policing, there is more work to be done. Over half of English and Welsh forces and all of Police Scotland have participated in the Domestic Abuse Matters change programme developed and delivered by SafeLives, licensed by the College of Policing. In the upcoming Spending Review the Government has the chance to make the funding available so that this programme can be delivered to every UK force to improve how they close down the space for abusive individuals to harm the people around them.
Police response to VAWG – Final inspection report
