London: The home secretary is to take personal charge of the way police respond to domestic abuse in England and Wales after a damning report exposed “alarming and unacceptable” weaknesses.
Theresa May will lead a national oversight group to ensure chief constables act on the recommendations of Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC), which she described as “depressing reading”.
The inspectorate condemned the police service for treating domestic abuse as “a poor relation” to other police activity and concluded that only eight out of 43 forces responded well to domestic violence.
May said the report, published on Thursday, exposed “significant failings, including a lack of visible police leadership and direction, poor victim care and deficiencies in the collection of important evidence”.
She added: “I expect chief constables to respond by changing radically their response to domestic violence. They owe it to victims of these appalling crimes to do so.”
The hard-hitting criticism comes as the police service is reeling from the crisis over the revelations about Hillsborough, undercover police and a lack of transparency and accountability.
In HMIC’s analysis of the failures in the policing of domestic violence the new inspector of constabulary, Tom Winsor, exposes shortcomings in basic police investigative practices.
The report concludes that the most vulnerable victims face a lottery in the way their cases are dealt with. It also identifies “poor attitudes, ineffective training and inadequate evidence gathering” and calls for an urgent overhaul by the police service of its response to domestic abuse from the front line up to the leadership.
There were 269,000 domestic-abuse-related crimes in England and Wales between 2012 and 2013, the report said, with 77 women killed by their partners or ex-partners in the 12-month period.
According to police assessments obtained by the Guardian last month, there were more than 10,000 women and children deemed to be at high risk of being murdered or seriously injured by their current or former partners.
Inspectors said Greater Manchester, Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire and Gloucestershire were causing particularly serious concern. The Lancashire force was highlighted as having the best response to domestic abuse.
The report said some officers showed a “considerable lack of empathy” in handling cases. Victims were not taken seriously, the report said, and the quality of response by police was left almost entirely to chance.
Refuge, the domestic violence charity, repeated its calls for a public inquiry following the damning report.
Sandra Horley, Refuge’s chief executive, said: “HMIC has come to a stark conclusion that the police response to domestic violence is not good enough.
“It is a national disgrace that decades after Refuge opened the world’s first safe house for victims ... the police are still not responding appropriately to women and children’s cries for help.”
HMIC said not all police leaders were making sure domestic violence was a priority for their forces. The inspectorate’s report also called for a further inspection of the other agencies that respond to victims, including health, local authorities and the Crown Prosecution Service.
The report said there were alarming and unacceptable weaknesses in core policing activity, in particular in the quality of the initial investigation. It also raised serious concerns over the failure of the police to undertake risk assessments of victims with a confused approach to arrests of alleged perpetrators.
It identified “risky gaps” in provision of specialist domestic abuse units as a result of cutbacks, leaving some with “unsustained workloads” and a lack of specialist support and provision.
The inspectorate also identified an inconsistent approach to how domestic violence cases were pursued and perpetrators targeted. The report said the targeting of perpetrators was “underdeveloped” in most forces.
Over the years reforms of the way the police service tackles domestic violence are supposed to have imposed a cohesive risk assessment model on all forces, in order for them to make victims safe but also to target the perpetrators.
This, the HMIC reported, was still not being done.
Basic investigative techniques were not carried out: for example, in 600 domestic abuse cases involving actual bodily harm, inspectors found photographs of injuries were taken in only half the cases.
Winsor said: “Domestic abuse is not only about violence. It is about fear, control and secrecy. It is essential that the police make substantial reforms to their handling of domestic abuse, including their understanding of the coercive and psychological nature of the crime as well as its physical manifestation.”
Zoe Billingham, the report’s author, said: “The service provided to victims of domestic abuse by the police is too often unacceptable. Police leaders told us tackling domestic abuse is important but in the majority of forces it is a priority on paper only and not in practice.
“It is deeply disappointing that the stated intent is not translating into an operational reality. The police service urgently needs to improve its overall response.
“The extent and nature of domestic abuse remains shocking. It can have a devastating effect. Every 30 seconds the police receive a call for assistance relating to domestic abuse.
“The findings of this report should be a wake-up call for the police service. Domestic abuse must no longer be the poor relation.”
NEW Assistant chief constable Louisa Rolfe the Acpo lead on domestic abuse said: “Our challenge is not an easy one. We grapple with a staggering level of acceptance of domestic abuse in our communities and a genuine reluctance from victims to come forward in the face of a very traditional justice system that doesn’t recognise the complex and very personal impact on those individuals who do come forward. ENDWe are also trying to improve our response in a time of continuing budget cuts and
austerity.
“Police need to get the basics right — the first response to victims of abuse, the investigation and the subsequent action to protect victims from violence and abuse — but we cannot tackle domestic abuse alone. Since forces were last inspected by HMIC in 2004, much work has been done to develop a much tighter partnership response with domestic abuse charities and health, social care, probation, education and housing services.”
Diana Barran, chief executive of the charity Coordinated Action Against Domestic Abuse, said she wanted to see police leaders move domestic violence from being treated as a second-class crime to one where victims got the response they deserved.
