37 women in the UK have been killed through suspected male violence from January to March 2014. 37 women in 90 days is one woman every 2.4 days.Thus begins the list of women who have been killed so far in 2014. These details are being compiled by Karen Ingala Smith on her excellent blog which you can find here. Her blog has lists for last year, the year before and many other useful resources.
I am highlighting her work on this for two key reasons today:
- This is a national crime matter that cannot and must not be ignored. Whilst the HMIC made the headlines last week with its recent report of its inspections into the response of the police to domestic violence, I remain fearful that, still, not enough resources are being put into reducing this level of violent crime. (My blog on the HMIC report is below, here)
- I am wondering how many of these crimes could have been predicted and therefore (possibly) prevented. The HMIC report emphasised the importance of risk assessment. The question I have is whether risk assessment is working and reducing the incidence of harmful outcomes, including fatalities.
The HMIC overall report says:
HMIC found that while forces are beginning to think about how to improve the management of the risk presented by perpetrators of domestic abuse, there is still significant work to be done to translate their plans into a reality.So in response, I ask the following questions:
- How many of the murderers of the victims on Karen Ingala Smith's blog were known to the police before hand?
- How many were known to the probation service?
- How many (known to either) might have hitherto been assessed to be low risk until they suddenly committed murder?
- How will the fragmentation of the probation service into commissioners, low risk (commercial) probation services and high risk National Probation Service (see my blog about this here) have an impact? (Let me take a guess...)
- Where is all the information about the learning from Domestic Homicide Reviews been collated & applied? (Given that the HMIC report states "Forces and other local partners raised the concern of limited opportunities to share the learning from DHRs")?
Helpfully, the Home Office did publish Domestic Homicide Reviews: Common Themes Identifed as Lessons to be Learned last year. How is this being followed up?
But... have the outcomes improved? (Are we seeing fewer domestic homicides?)
Most of the police use violently sexist media (porn) whereas they are banned from being part of violently racist groups as it was found to effect the way they treated black people. Why is noone joining the dots in the same way on sexist murders and hate crimes such as rape? Women have no confidence in the police force because they are largely male and they are mainly on the side of the perpetrators of sexist hate crimes because men as a group tend to gang up against females as a group. It is this ganging up tendency that prevents an equal society, and at present, the equality train is going backwards like a juggernaut. The press has been largely responsible for branding equality as 'political correctness gone maaaaad' - see Daily Mail, Express, The Sun, Star etc and nor do they report on the 1.2million women that suffer sexist attack in their own homes every year or the 102 that are murdered in sexist attacks. I was one of the former a few years ago and the male officer did everything in his power to make my use of commensurate force to defend myself into a joint attack. He also threatened to have my child taken from me if I was attacked again. I waited for five hours in a police station trying to report this officer for sexist bigotry but no one would take my complaint and when I complained to the IPCC they timed it out saying I had not complained within the statutory year from the attack even though I had attended the police station within three months. Social services refused to even interview my ex partner as they said he'd already proved himself irresponsible and so they put all the parental responsibility on to me for securing our child's safety from his behaviour rather than requesting him to control his temper and his own bigotry against females and children. Until guys start holding men to account for regarding themselves as superior humans to women and children, violence is an inevitable result as they beat other family members into putting the males needs first consistently over either their partners or their childs who they see as inferior to them and therefore their needs become inferior too.
ReplyDeletealso meant to feedback on the 37 women & counting, will do this soon. Think we lost another lass yesterday - sad and preventable me thinks Di
DeleteThat is sad.
ReplyDelete