Violence against women and girls "national emergency"
New report finds nearly 3,000 crimes recorded every day
Last updated 23rd Jul 2024
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% 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.
Rebekah Wilson is from the domestic abuse support charity The Wish Centre in Blackburn. She says the kind of language used by the report has been overdue: "I think it still has taken a long time for the seriousness and overwhelming statistics to be fully acknowledged.
"If 3000 people were injured or if a crime was committed against them in any other way, something would be done."
Rebekah added: "We have known that it is a public health crisis for many many years.
"One in four women are impacted by domestic abuse, and only somewhere between 18% and 24% is all that is reported.
"So because we do know that figure is much higher it is great to see that language being used."
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.
DCC 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 in England and Wales are perpetrators of such violence every year, the report estimated, with the actual number thought to be significantly higher.
Violence against women and girls was classed as a national threat to public safety by the Home Office in February 2023 and DCC 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 report detailing a 38% 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% 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% 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.
DCC 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."
Sophie Francis-Cansfield, head of external affairs at Women's Aid, said the report's findings were "alarming", adding that many survivors do not report their experiences meaning the issue is "much larger than the data shows".
Ms Francis-Cansfield added: "Women's Aid agree that violence against women and girls is a national threat, and echoes calls for a whole-system approach to tackling the problem and centres the most marginalised.
"This includes co-ordination between the criminal justice system, the government, and experts, and enhanced training and education, delivered by specialist services, to those working in statutory services like the police.
"Without meaningful collaboration and action, women and children will continue to be failed when it comes to be protected and when seeking justice for the abuse they have endured."