Violence against women "a national emergency" says police chief
A West Country expert says on the whole, things are not improving
Violence against women and girls is a "national emergency" with nearly 3,000 crimes recorded every day, a leading police chief has warned in a new report.
More than one million violent crimes against women and girls were recorded by police in 2022/23, according to a report commissioned by the National Police Chiefs' Council (NPCC) and the College of Policing.
The National Policing Statement for Violence Against Women and Girls found that such crimes accounted for just under 20 per cent of all police-recorded crime excluding fraud in England and Wales, between April 2022 and March 2023.
The report estimated that at least one in every 12 women will be a victim per year - equating to two million women - with the exact number expected to be much higher because of crimes that go unreported.
The deputy chief executive of the College of Policing said violence against women and girls had "reached epidemic levels" in England and Wales and called for government intervention in the "overwhelmed" criminal justice system.
Deputy Chief Constable Maggie Blyth said the creation of a National Centre for Public Protection would support police forces with specialist knowledge and training for investigators and officers.
She added that the data from the National Policing Statement was "staggering", with police records of violence against women and girls increasing by 37% from 2018/19 to 2022/23.
Ms Blyth said the criminal justice system was "under-performing for victims", with the report stating violence against women and girls was at such a scale "it cannot be addressed through law enforcement alone".
One in 20 adults or 2.3 million people in England and Wales are perpetrators of such violence every year, the report estimated, with the actual number thought to be significantly higher.
The age of offenders is also getting younger, with the average age of a suspect for child sexual abuse and exploitation now 15.
The NPCC report comes just days after another by His Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services (HMICFRS) found police forces are failing victims far too often.
Speaking to us in response to the HMICFRS report, Lorri Weaving, chief executive of Somerset and Avon Rape and Sexual Abuse Support, told us she is not surprised.
She said: "I've been in the sector a long time and I've never seen an overall improvement and sadly the indications are that that's not going to happen any time soon.
"Our experience from the people that we support (is) that on the whole the criminal justice response to their situation is not just inadequate, but actually quite retraumatising for them."
Violence against women and girls was classed as a national threat to public safety by the Home Office in February 2023 and Ms Blyth said a national framework had brought the police response in line with that of counter-terrorism.
More than 4,500 new officers have been trained to investigate rape and serious sexual offences over the last year, with the NPCC report detailing a 38 per cent increase in charges for adult rape from the year ending December 2022 to the year ending December 2023.
Child sexual abuse and exploitation offences also increased by 435 per cent between 2013 and 2022, the report estimated - from just over 20,000 to nearly 107,000.
The NPCC said police forces were seeing "ever more complicated types of offending" causing "significant harm to victims and society as a whole".
Arrests for domestic abuse related offences increased by more than 22 per cent in the year ending March 2023, compared with the previous period, with one in every six murders in 2022/23 being related to domestic abuse.
Ms Blyth, who is NPCC lead for violence against women and girls, said society needed to "move forward" and "no longer accept violence against women and girls as inevitable".
She added: "A centralised hub within policing that brings together specialised skill sets and capabilities would support police forces in improving their response to violence against women and girls.
"However, this will only achieve progress as part of a wider, effective criminal justice system, which at present is overwhelmed and under-performing for victims.
"Violence against women and girls is a national emergency.
"We need the support and direction of government to intervene and address the current problems within the criminal justice system and lead the way on a whole-system approach to violence against women and girls."
If you are a survivor of abuse, you can access a wide range of support via this link.