Domestic Abuse

(asked on 14th December 2020) - View Source

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many and what proportion of domestic abuse convictions related to controlling and coercive behaviour in (a) 2017, (b) 2018, (c) 2019 and (d) 2020.


Answered by
Alex Chalk Portrait
Alex Chalk
Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice
This question was answered on 17th December 2020

The Ministry of Justice does not hold data centrally on how many domestic abuse convictions relate to coercive and controlling behaviour. Offences involving domestic abuse can take various forms and are prosecuted under the offence in law that best reflects their nature and circumstances, for example, harassment, assault occasioning actual bodily harm, a public order offence. These offences can take the form of domestic abuse or non-domestic abuse and data collected centrally from courts does not distinguish between the two. The data on domestic abuse offences could only be identified by manually searching case records at disproportionate cost.

However, the Ministry of Justice regularly publishes information on all prosecutions and convictions for offences related to controlling and coercive behaviour, as defined by section 76 of the Serious Crime Act 2015, in the ‘Principal Offence Proceedings and Outcomes by Home Office Offence Code 2013 to 2019’ data tool, available here:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/938554/HO-code-tool-principal-offence-2019.xlsx

The number of convictions can be identified for each year from 2016 to 2019. Data from 2020 will be published in May 2021.

Reticulating Splines