On Tuesday evening this week it was an honour to meet and speak with several recently elected Labour MPs about the job of getting to work on delivering the new government’s promises to the electorate. In particular, the conversation was focussed on the mission pledge to take back our streets, and the commitment made to halve Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) within a decade.
Of the hundreds of women who die at the hands of men each year, and the many thousands who suffer violence, the vast majority of their stories begin with stalking and harassment. Virtually no offenders are even charged let alone investigated thoroughly, due to lack of police capacity, knowledge and tools in investigation teams. The national rate for charges in these cases is 6%. The Killed Women Campaign tell us that two thirds of bereaved families know that the deaths of their loved ones could have been prevented. That is to say there were clear signs that could and should have been acted upon.
I am Public Affairs Director for Forensic Analytics, a provider of technical and forensic support to policing, and we have had some recent success with tackling Stalking, Harassment and Domestic Violence. This is documented in The London Victim’s Commissioner’s report on Stalking, published earlier this week which on page 16 describes the success of Operation Atlas in East London. The unit have seen their charge rate increasing to 66%, with 96% of those cases resulting in convictions and 88% of those with guilty pleas. Our team equipped the officers of Operation Atlas with the advice, training and equipment they needed to generate the results.
How has this turnaround been achieved? By dedicated and diligent officers reforming their approach, equipping themselves with the right tools, digital skills and training, and most importantly listening to the victims and the witnesses. By working with victims to identify digital lines of enquiry, officers are obtaining objective evidential perspectives on the events that took place. Time after time they are uncovering information that corroborates victim accounts, reduces the need for victims to give evidence themselves, and drives up the chances of successful convictions.
These results can and should be replicated across the whole of UK policing. The current 6% charge rate leaves the vast majority of the 700,000 mainly female victims of this crime with no positive outcomes whatsoever, and at serious risk of escalating violence. If we can intercede and stop this violence in its tracks by tackling Stalking and Harassment early on, then Labour’s pledge to halve VAWG in a decade has a real chance of success.
I look forward to working with the Labour Government on making real change to people’s lives, and eliminating this scourge of violence.
For more on this topic, see ‘Labour needs a prevention-focused strategy for tackling VAWG’.
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