Punished twice

She went to the police seeking protection after being assaulted by her partner but ended up spending the night in a cell.

Unable to speak English and without an interpreter to explain what was happening, she had believed officers were keeping her safe. Only later, through a support worker, did she discover she had been arrested after her abuser reported her as the offender.

That case – anonymised, like all the others in the Centre for Women’s Justice’s newly published report – may be an extreme example of institutional failure but the research published this week suggests it is far from an isolated one.

Titled They Don’t Understand Abuse, the report draws on testimony from eighteen specialist frontline services across England, Wales and Northern Ireland and direct interviews with five survivor-victims. The conclusion is unambiguous: the criminal justice system is not just failing to protect women from domestic abuse. In a significant number of cases, it is actively criminalising them for it.

Participants in the research were asked to respond to a single hypothetical statement: that women’s experiences of domestic abuse or coercive control are properly taken into account in police decisions to arrest and prosecute them for offences connected to their abuse. The response was extraordinary in its unanimity. Without exception, every single participant — whether a service provider or a survivor — disagreed or strongly disagreed.

Routinely ignored

The research identifies five interlocking failures driving what it calls the “simultaneous under-policing of perpetrators and over-policing of women who are victims”: a culture of disbelief, a lack of understanding of domestic abuse and coercive control, failure to apply the public interest test, inadequate trauma-informed responses, and discrimination against Black, minority and migrant women.

The culture of disbelief finding will be the most uncomfortable for policing. Time and again, participants described perpetrators’ accounts being accepted without question while victims’ accounts were dismissed. College of Policing Authorised Professional Practice on domestic abuse first response is explicit: counter-allegations require officers to evaluate each complaint separately and investigate to determine the primary perpetrator. The guidance specifically warns that a manipulative perpetrator may be trying to draw police into colluding with their coercive control. According to the women and services who contributed to this research, that guidance is routinely ignored.

The consequences can be severe. In another case documented in the report, a woman was prosecuted for common assault against the man who had sexually assaulted her. He had filmed her on his phone pushing him away and repeatedly asking him to stop touching her without her permission – footage that was never disclosed to her. The woman’s sexual assault complaint was rejected for lack of evidence. The assault case against her proceeded, as she put it, “seemingly without question.” She pleaded guilty. She now has a criminal record.

In another case, a non-English speaking woman was abused by a partner who was also a social worker. He made allegations of child abuse against her. The police, the report records, “assumed he was telling the truth and quickly latched onto this.” Her children were left with him when she was arrested. He refused to return them. She was separated from a baby she was still breastfeeding.

Still misunderstood

The report’s authors – led by Pragna Patel, co-founder of Southall Black Sisters and director of Project Resist – are careful to acknowledge that guidance exists. The problem is not the absence of frameworks but the failure to follow them. Police officers, participants noted, understood coercive control at a superficial level: they were better trained to look for signs of non-physical abuse, but failed to contextualise single incidents within patterns of control. The focus remained on physical injury. Perpetrators who understood this were therefore able to exploit it.

Research by Professor Marianne Hester, cited in the report, found that women were three times more likely to be arrested following counter-allegations at a domestic abuse incident than men facing similar allegations. Howard League research found that of nearly 100,000 arrests of women in England and Wales each year, an estimated 37,000 led to no charges suggesting a significant overuse of arrest when proper contextual assessment would have made it unnecessary.

The Maggie Oliver Foundation, which participated in the research, estimated that between 30 and 40 per cent of the 1,500 victims it supported in the past three years were threatened with arrest or criminalised. In many cases significant effort was put into investigating the women’s alleged offending while virtually no resource was directed at examining the context of the abuse they had themselves reported.

Misuse of cautions

One of the report’s most troubling findings relates to the misuse of cautions. In multiple cases, women detained in police custody were offered cautions and accepted them. This was not because they believed they had committed an offence but simply because they wanted to be released.

But a caution still amounts to a criminal record. It will appear on Disclosure and Barring Service checks. It can prevent a victim from obtaining a non-molestation order, because on paper it makes her look like the perpetrator. It can jeopardise housing, employment and, for migrant women, immigration status.

For women with insecure immigration status, the dynamics described in the research are particularly acute. Several service providers described perpetrators who were British nationals and understood exactly how to use the criminal justice system and immigration enforcement as instruments of control. Calling the police, making allegations, triggering an arrest – these become extensions of coercive control rather than departures from it. The police, participants suggested, are often unaware that they are being weaponised.

Beyond the five thematic failures, the report identifies four structural gaps that compound the problem. First, women’s specialist services are not universally available and frequently receive referrals too late to prevent the initial arrest or charge.

Second, delays in providing professional interpreting services drive inappropriate detention: several cases involved women held overnight in police cells simply because no interpreter could be found.

Third, legal aid does not currently fund defence solicitors to engage with suspects before charge – precisely the stage at which, the report argues, most of these cases should be closed down.

Fourth, victim-survivors and specialist services have been insufficiently included in developing the training, guidance and accountability mechanisms that are supposed to address these failures.

Immediate action

The report’s recommendations are specific and, in several cases, already have traction. The National Police Chiefs Council and Crown Prosecution Service have begun strategic work on improving their response to women suspects and defendants, including commitments to introduce a joint protocol for handling cases where the suspect may also be a victim of VAWG.

The Women’s Justice Board, reporting in March 2026, recommended legislation to provide effective defences for victims of domestic abuse accused of offending – a recommendation the government has not yet accepted, though it has committed to considering self-defence legislation if the Law Commission recommends it in its homicide review, due in 2028.

The CWJ’s own recommendations include establishing those effective defences; improving training and guidance for police and prosecutors with a specific focus on Black, Asian, minoritised and migrant victims; improving the CPS Code for Crown Prosecutors; and guaranteeing access to specialist women’s services from the first point of contact with police, along with timely access to female interpreters.

For policing, the report’s most direct challenge is operational: the guidance already exists. Officers are already instructed to probe counter-allegations, to consider the history of the parties, to guard against being drawn into a perpetrator’s coercive strategy. The evidence presented here suggests that instruction is not being followed consistently, and that there is currently little accountability when it is not.

Harriet Wistrich, solicitor and Chief Executive of the Centre for Women’s Justice, frames the stakes plainly. Victim-survivors have repeatedly put themselves forward to share painful experiences in order to persuade those in power to act.

The NPCC and CPS work is welcomed. But achieving real change, she argues, will require system-wide commitment led from the top of government, including sustained investment in the specialist services that are, repeatedly and visibly, the difference between women being criminalised and women being protected.

“Anything short of a full-throated endorsement of the recommendations in this report, and those of the Women’s Justice Board, will fail victims,” she said.