SafeLives welcome Government move to make VAWG a national policing priority

We welcome the news that the Home Secretary is set to make tackling Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) a national policing priority, known as a Strategic Policing Requirement (SPR), for forces in England and Wales. What we hope will follow will be:

• VAWG on the agenda for every strategic policing forum, nationally and up and down the country, from now on.
• Status for the police officers and staff who choose to pursue a specialism in that kind of work, on a par with the plaudits officers get now for working in counter terrorism or public order.
• Performance metrics which increasingly join up VAWG with other crime types to see the whole picture of individual and cohort behaviours.
• Money comparable to the money which is provided for counter terrorism – other crime types in the Strategic Policing Requirement also lag behind Counter Terrorism very significantly and that needs to change.
• Strategic thinking following strategic requirement. This means forces and other leaders in policing and policy thinking about how to close the gaps in operational responses both between agencies and inside agencies, making sure they close down abusers’ space for action and give high quality trustworthy responses to victim-survivors.
• Other Government departments thinking seriously about their role and the role of ‘their’ big state agencies. This isn’t just a criminal justice issue and other departments need to step forward and show leadership.