Centre for Women’s Justice (CWJ) welcomes key commitments in the government’s long-awaited Freedom from Violence and Abuse strategy published yesterday. However, the strategy fails to introduce urgently needed protections for victim-survivors accused of offending.
Harriet Wistrich, CEO of Centre for Women’s Justice, said:
“The government strategy and action plan as to how it will work towards its mission to halve violence against women and girls in a decade has been a long time coming. Broadly, we welcome the ambition and cross governmental commitment to tackling this national emergency. However, the scale of the problem requires not only a paper commitment but sufficient resourcing and accountability to ensure it can work. We remain disappointed that more has not been done to tackle the unjust criminalisation of survivors of VAWG which is itself a form of violation perpetrated by the state.”
She added:
“We also join our sister organisations in condemning responses to the strategy which use misleading statistics to promote an anti-migrant agenda. Such narratives fuel division, harm survivors and undermine efforts to tackle society-wide violence against women and girls.”
While we will take some more time to digest fully the content of the strategy and action plan, we respond here to the commitments made – and missed out – to protect victims of VAWG from unjust criminalisation.
We welcome the government’s commitments to improving awareness and understanding of how victims and survivors can become criminalised as a result of abuse. This is an important step forward that will help to support delivery of reforms by the police, CPS and all other agencies involved in the criminal justice process – including the courts, prisons and probation. It must include specific attention to the response to Black and minoritised migrant survivors who, as the government’s strategy acknowledges, are more likely to experience criminalisation arising from their experience of abuse. We pay tribute to the survivors who have bravely shared their experiences of criminalisation to help get to this point – these changes would not be happening if they had not come forward.
However, we are deeply disappointed to see no commitment to introducing legal protections to ensure victim-survivors of VAWG who are accused of offending have an effective defence. While the government states that the Law Commission’s review of homicide law, including how the law responds to abuse-related cases and defences, ‘will inform future legislative changes to ensure the law better reflects the realities of abuse’, this review does not consider the lack of effective defences for victims of domestic abuse who are coerced into offending. Legal reforms are urgently needed to provide an effective defence in such cases. We will continue to press the government to act decisively to protect survivors who are coerced into offending, instead of punishing them.
The commitment to make changes to crown court and magistrates’ court defence forms to include questions about histories of domestic abuse and coercive control, ‘helping to gather contextual information and deepen our understanding of the factors leading to criminalisation’, is a practical and positive step. This reflects a recommendation made by CWJ in our 2022 Double Standard report, and we are delighted to see it being taken forward at last.
The strategy also confirms the government’s earlier, important commitments to protect victims of child sexual exploitation who may have been unjustly criminalised, including the expunging of criminal records for prostitution offences acquired as a child. The government should go further to repeal the offence of ‘loitering or soliciting’ and provide for the expunging of criminal records for this offence which were received as an adult, as well as for children.
The strategy rightly acknowledges that nearly 70% of women in prison are victims of domestic abuse and that there is ‘a lack of awareness and understanding across the criminal justice system about the contextual dynamics of domestic abuse which lead victims to offend, impacting their response’, referring to the work of government and the Women’s Justice Board to reduce women’s imprisonment.
The work to reduce women’s imprisonment is inextricably linked with the work to tackle VAWG, and the connections between these two strands of work must be significantly strengthened. Joint work to achieve success must include ensuring that measures in the strategy such as the new Police Performance Framework, trauma-informed training for criminal court staff and improved training for criminal justice practitioners on VAWG include a substantive focus on improving the criminal justice response to suspects and defendants who are also victims of VAWG.
Commenting on other measures in the strategy and action plan:
CWJ welcomes the ambition and cross governmental approach of the strategy more generally and the positive commitments contained within it including a recognition of the need for specialised understanding of VAWG, training and effective leadership, but these measures will only be effective if backed with sufficient funding and clear accountability.
In particular we welcome the following initiatives relating directly to the work and advocacy of CWJ:
A commitment to the introduction of Independent Legal Advice for victims of rape
Improved training for criminal justice practitioners on VAWG to inform appropriate sentencing and offender management
Strengthening of victim/survivors right to challenge decisions to discontinue prosecutions
The funding of specialist advocacy provision including ‘by and for’ provision
Bring Operation Soteria to Courts
The expansion of Domestic Abuse Specialist Courts
Roll out ‘Raneem’s Law’ to improve police response to domestic abuse
Improving the effectiveness of VAWG protection orders
Equip police officers and staff with capability and evidence-based guidance to respond effectively to VAWG
Embed specialist rape and sexual offences teams in every police force
Ensure police treat VAWG as a top priority with the seriousness it deserves
Keep perpetrators out of policing through effective vetting and suspension of officers under suspicion for VAWG
Finally and crucially - frontline services are critical in protecting victims from abuse and from unjust criminalisation. They need adequate and sustainable funding to deliver life-saving support. We echo the concerns of the Domestic Abuse Commissioner, Nicole Jacobs, that the funding committed under the strategy ‘falls seriously short’.
ENDS