A domestic abuse register must be introduced to stop the “chilling” numbers of women killed by their partners, a shadow justice minister has warned.
Speaking to The Independent in an exclusive interview, Ellie Reeves, shadow minister for prisons and probation, raised concerns there is a lack of “political will” in government to tackle domestic abuse as she warned “a lot more” must be done.
Ms Reeves, who leads on violence against women and girls in the justice team, hit out at the fact there has been a fall in charging, prosecution and convictions for domestic abuse.
Recent data released by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) showed police referrals to them have yet again decreased since the year before. Some 67,790 cases were referred, in comparison to 72,527 in the year ending June 2021, which is a fall of around seven per cent.
Rachel Horman-Brown, a prominent domestic abuse lawyer, also voiced concerns about the figures, telling The Independent the criminal justice system’s handling of domestic abuse cases is worsening and “contributing to homicides” of women.
While Refuge, the UK’s largest provider of shelters for domestic abuse victims, said the statistics demonstrate the UK is enduring an “epidemic of violence against women and girls” which exhibits “no sign” of coming to an end.
Discussing the need for a domestic abuse register, Ms Reeves said: “We need to see that very often there is a long history of domestic abuse. It is not just something that is against one partner. We find out it has happened to previous women in the past as well.”
The Labour politician, who is MP for Lewisham West and Penge, said “things are not joined up” at the moment and a register would give authorities a way of “centrally tracking” information about abusers.
“If a probation officer doesn’t know about someone’s history or if the court isn’t aware of the long history of it, then there is less that can be done and fewer interventions that can be made to change offending behaviour and put in place solutions to it all,” Ms Reeves said.
Labour’s register would be for those convicted of serial domestic abuse and stalking and use the existing Violent and Sex Offender Register as the prototype for its format. Under the new measures, offenders convicted of serial offences and stalking would be forced to hand over personal information to the police and inform them of a change in their situation.
Ms Reeves, a former employment law barrister who represented trade unions, said she ultimately thought such a register could stop women dying at the hands of men as she warned victims are currently faced with a “postcode lottery”.
The government could have introduced a register when the domestic abuse bill was going through parliament, she added.
Ms Richards, a former top Metropolitan Police violent crime analyst, has been calling for a register for serial perpetrators of domestic abuse and stalking since 2004.
Between two and three women are murdered each week by their partners or ex-partners in England and Wales.
Recent data released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) shows the number of domestic abuse crimes in England and Wales surged by eight per cent in comparison to the year before, rising to 910,980 in the year ending March 2022.
Ms Horman-Brown, head of family, domestic Abuse, and stalking at WR Solicitors, told The Independent, she supports a domestic abuse register as long as “it is actually utilised” but argued a “complete overhaul of how domestic abuse” is handled is needed.
Ms Horman-Brown, chair of Paladin, the National Stalking Advocacy Service, added: “The criminal justice system has never done very well with cases of domestic abuse however I have noticed that they are getting worse and that their lack of action or badly handled interventions are actually putting women at more risk of homicide rather than less.
“Officers need to be held to account for these failings and until we see officers charged with corporate manslaughter type offences or see them losing their jobs and their pensions nothing will change.”
She claimed women who come forward to allege domestic abuse are “routinely fobbed off and met with an attitude of disbelief” by officers which other crimes like burglary do not solicit.
