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Police chiefs have described an epidemic scale of violence against women and girls in England and Wales in a national policing statement:
"Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) has reached epidemic levels in England and Wales, in terms of its scale, complexity and impact on victims. We have seen a 37% increase in recorded VAWGrelated crimes from 2018/19 to 2022/23 and we estimate that at least 1 in every 12 women will be a victim of VAWG every year (2 million victims) and 1 in 20 adults in England and Wales will be a perpetrator of VAWG every year (2.3 million perpetrators). These are cautious estimates as we know much crime goes unreported and in policing, we often only see the tip of the iceberg.
The data in our first VAWG National Policing Statement, which follows the Strategic Risk Assessment and Progress Report published last year, is staggering. In recognition of the threat, in February 2023, the Home Office classified VAWG for the first time as a national threat to public safety and made it part of the Strategic Policing Requirement (SPR). This means that police forces prioritise their response to VAWG as they do terrorism and serious and organised crime. We have worked hard to improve the public’s trust and confidence in policing and have brought our response in line with the 4Ps model used in counter terrorism to reflect how seriously policing takes VAWG. We continue to work at pace to make our response to VAWG more consistent, by; relentlessly pursuing high harm and repeat perpetrators; by preparing to more effectively respond by improving our workforce capability and culture; by protecting victims; and by delivering on our statutory commitments to prevent VAWG happening in the first place."
"However, we recognise there is more to do.
In this statement, we outline our commitment to provide enhanced support to our forces and frontline officers by establishing a National Centre for Public Protection (NC4PP). This will provide coordination across forces and help to embed improvements. Our analysis has identified five critical threats to women and girls; rape and serious sexual offences, domestic abuse, stalking and harassment, child sexual abuse and exploitation, and online and techenabled VAWG. The last of these continues to evolve at pace, testing our response and focusing attention on the ability of the technology industry to protect people following the recent online safety legislation. Policing must focus on these five critical threats because that is where we can make the most impact - going after those repeat offenders whose pattern of behaviour causes such harm. But law enforcement alone cannot reduce the scale and impact of VAWG.
Support is needed to improve the overall criminal justice response. For example, tackling the courts backlog, prison capacity pressures and challenges in through the gate offender management will help to ensure that a policing response has real consequences. To respond effectively to those wider offences, often referred to as public spaces VAWG offences, policing needs to work in partnership. A coherent and robust whole-system approach is needed to prevent VAWG from happening in the first place. Reinvigorating partnerships at a national, regional and local level between statutory agencies, charities and the private sector will help to prevent initial harm, its escalation and impact, both behind closed doors and in public spaces. This statement provides a detailed assessment of the threat VAWG poses to public safety and how policing intends to improve its response to this threat. However, I believe it also sets out the need for other agencies and sectors to contribute to wholesale change in order to make women and girls both feel and be safer."
You can read the full report here.
