scholarly journals Writing up or writing off crimes of domestic violence? A transitivity analysis of police reports

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 48-69
Author(s):  
Patricia Canning
Keyword(s):  
Domestic Violence ◽  
Police Officers ◽  
Domestic Abuse ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
National Statistics ◽  
Charging Rate ◽  
Police Reports ◽  
Participant Roles ◽  
The One

Between March 2019 and March 2020 in England and Wales (excludingGreater Manchester), there were 1,288,018 recorded incidents of domestic violence(DV, otherwise known as ‘domestic abuse’ or ‘DA’), an increase of 4.2% (51,404incidents) on the previous year (Office for National Statistics 2020). Only 56%of these were classified by police as ‘crimes’ (Office for National Statistics 2020).Additionally, despite the annual rise of DV the charging rate of suspects fell in2019–2020 by 20.5% (Crown Prosecution Service 2020). This raises two primaryquestions: 1) why are almost half of reported DV incidents not considered ‘crimes’?and 2) in spite of rising numbers of incidents, why do prosecutions continue to fall?These questions are central to this paper. A possible factor influencing attritionrates concerns the language used by police officers to record DV incidents. Thispaper, then, explores whether the linguistic choices made by police officers onjudicial reports of DV in a sample of cases collected from the year 2010 reflectimplicit attitudinal biases, that in turn, can potentially pre-empt out-of-court casedisposals within contemporaneous DV cases. If so, this may also go some way toexplaining the gap between cases reported as DV crimes and cases recorded assuch. The dataset under analysis comes from a corpus of 13 police-authored DVcases sent to prosecutors for charging decisions in one calendar month in 2010 (formore detail about the corpus, see Lynn and Canning 2021; Lea and Lynn 2012.All 13 cases were returned with a ‘simple caution’ outcome, which means thatnone progressed to prosecution. Two of these cases are used as representative ofthe 13 that comprise the corpus. The analysis of the data is carried out usingthe model of transitivity (Berry 1975; Halliday 1994) to identify participant roles,actions, and circumstances as well as their syntactic distribution. The analysisshows that officers’ lexical and syntactic choices yield patterns of agency thatdownplay suspects’ culpability on the one hand, and background victims on theother. The paper concludes by arguing that how police present agency, participantroles, and circumstantial elements in reports to prosecutors can encode a ‘preferredoutcome’ resulting in more lenient charging decisions.

Need to Teach

2019 ◽  
pp. 86-115
Author(s):  
Juliane Hammer
Keyword(s):  
Domestic Violence ◽  
Domestic Abuse ◽  
Religious Discourse ◽  
The Other ◽  
Religious Authority ◽  
Existential Issue ◽  
The One ◽  
Muslim Communities ◽  
Taking Action

This chapter examines interviews conducted with Muslim advocates whose work against domestic violence (DV) focuses on awareness and prevention. There is a shared story arch among many of the advocates that supports the primacy of an experienced and embodied ethic on non-abuse that is then translated into active work in the community and in a later step a search for religious discourse in order to further effective activism. Advocates often first recognized domestic abuse as wrong, then became critical of the ways in which Muslim communities address or do not address this issue, and responded by taking action and developing or finding religious arguments. It is in this last part of the story that religious authority, and with that status and authority in communities, became an existential issue for the effectiveness of anti-DV work. The chapter then reflects on the connection between feminist ideas about patriarchy and DV on the one hand and acceptance/rejection of such ideas in Muslim communities on the other.

Offender-Centric Policing in Cases of Rape

2021 ◽  
pp. 002201832110274
Author(s):  
Philip NS Rumney ◽  
Duncan McPhee
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Domestic Violence ◽  
Police Officers ◽  
Sexual Offending ◽  
Confirmation Bias ◽  
Missed Opportunities ◽  
Predatory Behaviour ◽  
Investigative Tool ◽  
Care And Support ◽  
History Of

The article explores the idea of ‘offender-centric’ policing in cases of rape, with its focus on suspect and offender admissions and behaviours. It features discussion of 11 cases, illustrating offender-centric pathways to charge or conviction, the challenges facing complainants, suspects and police officers, along with missed opportunities to focus on a suspect’s behaviour. The importance of victim care and support is discussed, and it is argued that victim care should accompany an offender-centric approach to rape investigation. It is also argued that there are potential dangers with offender-centric tactics, specifically, that without due care it may become a self-confirming investigative tool influenced by confirmation bias which may lead to flawed decision-making. The article concludes by arguing that offender-centric policing has benefits in those cases with suspects who engage in predatory behaviour, have a history of previously undisclosed sexual offending and domestic violence and other problematic behaviours. It also has value in focusing the attention of investigators on what steps were taken by a suspect to ascertain the complainant’s consent. While the offender-centric approach cannot address all investigative challenges in rape cases, it is a useful addition to existing strategies.

scholarly journals Where should police forces target their residential burglary reduction efforts? Using official victimisation data to predict burglary incidences at the neighbourhood level

Crime Science ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
James Hunter ◽  
Bethany Ward ◽  
Andromachi Tseloni ◽  
Ken Pease
Keyword(s):  
Police Officers ◽  
Crime Rates ◽  
Crime Reduction ◽  
Residential Burglary ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
Neighbourhood Level ◽  
The Mean ◽  
Terrain Modelling ◽  
Modelling Approach ◽  
Police Forces

AbstractExpected crime rates that enable police forces to contrast recorded and anticipated spatial patterns of crime victimisation offer a valuable tool in evaluating the under-reporting of crime and inform/guide crime reduction initiatives. Prior to this study, police forces had no access to expected burglary maps at the neighbourhood level covering all parts of England and Wales. Drawing on analysis of the Crime Survey for England and Wales and employing a population terrain modelling approach, this paper utilises household and area characteristics to predict the mean residential burglary incidences per 1000 population across all neighbourhoods in England and Wales. The analysis identifies distinct differences in recorded and expected neighbourhood burglary incidences at the Output Area level, providing a catalyst for stimulating further reflection by police officers and crime analysts.

scholarly journals Clouding the Judgment of Domestic Violence Law: Victim Blaming by Institutional Stakeholders in Cambodia

2015 ◽  
Vol 32 (9) ◽  
pp. 1358-1378 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Brickell
Keyword(s):  
Domestic Violence ◽  
Police Officers ◽  
Victim Blaming ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Multi Stakeholder ◽  
Institutional Stakeholders ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Government Authority ◽  
Do So ◽  
Domestic Violence Law

This article examines victims’ purported complicity in the judicial failures of domestic violence law to protect them in Cambodia. It is based on 3 years (2012-2014) of research in Siem Reap and Pursat Provinces on the everyday politics of the 2005 “Law on the Prevention of Domestic Violence and the Protection of the Victims” (DV Law). The project questioned why investments in DV Law are faltering and took a multi-stakeholder approach to do so. In addition to 40 interviews with female domestic violence victims, the research included 50 interviews with legal and health professionals, NGO workers, low- and high-ranking police officers, religious figures, and local government authority leaders who each have an occupational investment in the implementation and enforcement of DV Law. Forming the backbone of the article, the findings from this latter sample reveal how women are construed not only as barriers “clouding the judgment of law” but also as actors denying the agency of institutional stakeholders (and law itself) to bring perpetrators to account. The findings suggest that DV Law has the potential to entrench, rather than diminish, an environment of victim blaming. In turn, the article signals the importance of research on, and better professional support of, intermediaries who (discursively) administrate the relationship between DV Law and the victims/citizens it seeks to protect.

scholarly journals The postcode lottery of safety: COVID-19 guidance and shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE) for UK police officers

2021 ◽  
pp. 0032258X2110187
Author(s):  
Camilla De Camargo
Keyword(s):  
Police Officers ◽  
Personal Protective Equipment ◽  
Safety Information ◽  
Health And Safety ◽  
Interview Data ◽  
Government Agencies ◽  
Protective Equipment ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
Working Practices ◽  
Police Forces

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused significant changes to police working practices involving the enhanced wearing of personal protective equipment (PPE), and ways of working inside and outside of police stations. The safety guidance released by the various government agencies has been conflicting, confusing and unhelpfully flexible, and there are significant discrepancies between some of the 43 forces of England and Wales. This article draws on primary interview data with 18 police officers from 11 UK police forces to explore the problems that officers faced in accessing appropriate PPE and the difficulties in obtaining and understanding accurate coronavirus health and safety information.

scholarly journals Seeing is believing: the impact of body-worn cameras on court outcomes, a cluster-randomized controlled trial in Miami Beach

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Petersen ◽  
Alejandro Mouro ◽  
Donald Papy ◽  
Noel Castillo ◽  
Barak Ariel
Keyword(s):  
Domestic Violence ◽  
Randomized Controlled Trial ◽  
Police Officers ◽  
Negative Binomial ◽  
Controlled Trial ◽  
Cluster Randomized Controlled Trial ◽  
Randomized Controlled ◽  
Early Results ◽  
Cluster Randomized ◽  
The Impact

Abstract Objectives To assess the effects of BWCs on prosecutorial and court-related charge outcomes across multiple crime types, including domestic violence charges, crimes committed against police officers, and drug/alcohol charges. Methods A cluster-randomized controlled trial with 22 spatiotemporal police units assigned to BWCs and 17 assigned to control conditions. Data from the State Attorney’s Office were used to track convictions, adjudication withheld dispositions, and declined prosecutions for both experimental and control charges. A series of multilevel logistic and negative binomial regression models were used to estimate the effect of BWC footage on charge outcomes. Outcomes BWCs led to a significantly higher proportion of crimes against police officers resulting in convictions or adjudication withheld outcomes, and a significantly higher proportion of domestic violence charges resulting in convictions alone, compared to control charges. However, after the clustering effect was taken into account, only the effect of BWCs on crimes against police officers remained statistically significant. Conclusion These early results suggest that BWCs have significant evidentiary value that varies by crime type. BWCs may be best suited to capture evidence of crimes committed against police officers and potentially in domestic violence offenses as well.

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