Researchers call for true picture of domestic violent crime

Violence against women could become significantly less visible in police-recorded crime figures when a new counting method comes into effect, warn researchers at Lancaster University. Plans for Home Office Counting Rules to count coercive and controlling behaviour as 'non-injurious violent crime' capped at one crime per victim - even though statistics show one in 20 victims can experience more than 10 domestic violence crimes a year - will mask the true extent of the problem. The warning comes in a new paper, ' Untangling the concept of coercive control: theorising domestic violent crime' , just published in the journal, Criminology and Criminal Justice. Authors Professor Sylvia Walby and Dr Jude Towers, from the Violence and Society UNESCO Centre at Lancaster University, say measurement really matters and that only by taking account of the repetitive nature of domestic violence will the full extent be made visible. Currently, and under review, official estimation methods of the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) 'cap' frequencies of violent crimes against the same victim at a maximum of five. When the 'cap' is removed and all violent crimes reported to the survey are included in the estimates, gender imbalance in domestic violent crime significantly increases. "Counting all crimes reported to a survey is the right thing to do," they say.