Policing Domestic Abuse: A Critical Systems Approach to Surfacing Values, Boundaries, and Assumptions?

The history of policing domestic abuse (DA) in England and Wales could be defined as one of those ‘wicked problems’ which for many years has attracted an indifferent response from policing and the criminal justice system (CJS). Arguably, this illustrated a lack of critical insight or awareness of the needs of victim survivors and how the power and gender imbalances prevalent within society, and within the CJS, had impacted upon them. However, beginning in the 1980s, a temporal alignment of surfacing values and political and socio-cultural thought concerning the problem of DA led to a genesis of more enlightened and insightful systemic changes which reflected a cultural sensitivity towards human rights, risk, harm, and vulnerability. This, in turn, led to structural and evidence-informed changes within multi-agency practices, including the police. This chapter will explore how and why these changes occurred through theoretically informed policy shifts. However, whilst recognising a decade of developing policy in respect of DA and Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) (Home Office, 2021; College of Policing and National Police Chiefs Council, 2021), it will become clear that the existing structure of the CJS and its relationship with the English legal system leaves open to question whether these changes reflect an effective and formal rights-based experience for victims of crime. This is because the criminal justice system in England and Wales is formed of disparate partners with blurred boundaries and lines of accountability and an adversarial legal system in which the offender has more formal protections within human rights legislation. That said, the chapter will conclude with some reflections upon the implications for policy and practice.