Access to the bigger picture | Tackling VAWG and RASSO Impact Days
A woman is killed by a man every three days in the UK. The CPS have identified a link between stalking and domestic abuse and the most recent ONS figures show there were 194,683 sexual offences in the year ending March 2022.
So, understanding threat and risk early on in an investigation is essential. I would go as far to say that improving trust and confidence in the way policing is tackling VAWG is dependent on it.
It’s the initial risk assessment that rates an incident high, medium, or low risk and which team it’s allocated to, which determines the victim’s journey from the outset. Take this scenario.
Penny is a victim of low-level domestic violence and has had multiple contacts with the police, NHS, and social services. Her reluctance to cooperate means her partner has never been charged, but the incidents are logged in those organisations local systems. Despite the escalating violence she and her partner move counties for a fresh start.
Soon after Penny needs hospital treatment following an attack by her partner. The police are called but the information system couldn’t connect the recent assault to the other assaults across the force border. Penny doesn’t want to get her partner into trouble and so the escalating risk isn’t determined. The opportunity for early intervention is missed and Penny suffers another more serious assault the following week and is killed.
The holy grail of early intervention is good information, and this means information that can cross borders and silos. The ideal scenario would be to have a single record for Penny’s partner that crosses multiple force and organisational boundaries. This will enable a more joined up approach that will prevent a serial perpetrator being treated as a first-time offender following the move.
Technology exists and is being used by forces that can support the police to process and share the volume of evidence that can accompany a VAWG investigation, but often a low-level incident is not seen as ‘serious’ enough to warrant sharing.
Dare to share
Bringing offenders to justice, and creating safer spaces for women and girls are core aims of the NPCC national strategy. But isolated safeguarding concerns across organisations don’t always meet the ‘dare to share’ threshold. IT today can break down the silos and organisational barriers and pick out the disparate pieces of the information puzzle to create a more complete record and highlight any emerging threats.
This can help police forces to manage victims of serial domestic abusers away from the position of risk.
Authors
