Improvements needed to ensure effectiveness of new domestic abuse legislation, says CJI

Criminal Justice Inspection Northern Ireland (CJI) has recommended that collaboration and communication between the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and the Public Prosecution Service for Northern Ireland (PPS) “needs to improve to maximise the use of the Act provisions”.

The findings of its review assessing the effectiveness of legislation that created a new domestic abuse offence and aimed to better support victims and children affected by domestic abuse has been published on Wednesday (April 17) by CJI.

Inspectors looked at how the Department of Justice (DoJ), the PSNI, the PPS and the Northern Ireland Courts and Tribunals Service (NICTS) had implemented Part 1 of the Domestic Abuse and Civil Proceedings Act (Northern Ireland) 2021 (the Act) since the legislation came into force on February 21, 2022.

“This Act recognised the devastating impact abusive behaviour, including controlling or coercive behaviour, has on men, women and children in homes throughout our community. Importantly, it brought Northern Ireland into line with other jurisdictions in the UK that had specific legislation to address domestic abuse,” said Jacqui Durkin, Chief Inspector of Criminal Justice in Northern Ireland.

“It closed a gap in the law by criminalising a course of abusive behaviour, that is behaviour that occurs on two or more occasions, against an intimate partner, former partner or close family member.

“This important legislation introduced a range of aggravating factors that can be considered by judges when cases of domestic abuse or offences committed in a domestic setting are prosecuted and abusers sentenced.

“When aggravators are correctly applied by police and prosecutors and brought to the court’s attention, judges can impose enhanced sentences when abusive behaviour is aimed at or is threatened to be aimed at a child, a child saw, heard or was present during an incident of abuse or a child is used to facilitate abusive behaviour.

“Also, any other offence, other than the domestic abuse offence, can be aggravated where it involves domestic abuse, for example, criminal damage in the family home.

“In addition, the legislation introduced changes to the use of special measures to assist victims of domestic abuse to give their best evidence at court, strengthened information sharing between the police and schools where children experienced domestic abuse, and put in place arrangements where victims of domestic abuse could apply for civil legal aid to assist with legal costs.”

CJI was appointed by the Minister of Justice in September 2021 to fulfil a requirement under Section 33 of the Act to provide independent oversight of Part 1 of the Act each year for a period of seven years.

“The review report I have published today is the first of these reports and has been informed by fieldwork undertaken in the PSNI, the PPS, the NICTS and the DoJ. Inspectors also engaged with a wide range of stakeholder organisations including Women’s Aid, Men’s Advisory Project, the NSPCC and Victim Support Northern Ireland to secure their views.  Case file reviews were carried out on 70 police investigation files and 98 prosecution files to understand how the PSNI and the PPS were applying the Act to relevant cases,” said Ms Durkin.

Inspectors found the DoJ and its partners in the criminal justice system had done a lot of work individually and collectively to prepare for and implement this important legislation.

Comprehensive statutory guidance was produced with input from victim support organisations, however, inspectors found there was limited awareness about its existence.

An extensive information and awareness raising campaign incorporating advertising and social media activity was delivered to increase public awareness about domestic abuse and the new offence.

“The proactive public information campaign is welcome and an important step in implementing the Act; having raised awareness it also raises expectations of an effective response when domestic abuse is reported,” said the Chief Inspector.

The PSNI, PPS and NICTS also provided training to staff on the legislation, which was challenging to use.

Inspectors found that police officers responded to domestic offences in a proactive and effective way and decision-making by PPS prosecutors was also sound.

However, inspectors identified there were some delays in the PSNI response provided to emergency and priority incidents and the quality of risk assessments completed by police officers could be enhanced with greater detail shared with statutory and voluntary partners.

The review identified that improvements are required in how police officers and prosecutors apply the domestic abuse offence.

“Our case file review found the offence had not been correctly identified by police officers in up to two-fifths of cases examined and by prosecutors in one quarter of cases looked at by inspectors,” said Ms Durkin.

There also remained a need for PPS prosecutors to better record the reasons for their decisions to prosecute or not prosecute within their prosecution case files, she said.

“We recommend that collaboration and communication between the PSNI and the PPS needs to improve to maximise the use of the Act provisions, particularly the use of the domestic abuse offence and aggravators applied when they can and should be, as well as re-visiting the concept of specialist PPS prosecutors,” added Ms Durkin.

“More work also needs to be done to improve the use of the aggravators, particularly as they apply to children and fulfil the Act’s intention to better protect children from harm.

“I recognise any new legislation can be challenging to implement and many positive steps have been taken but this review has identified a number of areas where further improvements are needed now. We have made two strategic and nine operational recommendations to support and assist criminal justice organisations to improve how the legislation is used as intended.

“Our review next year will include a focus on the report recommendations and their implementation, and I would encourage criminal justice organisations to take action on the recommendations we have made to ensure this legislation is implemented with the same energy and drive needed to create it.”

The PSNI welcomed the report, which found areas of good practice and recognition of the effort of the force to date in training its officers and staff to better recognise and respond to this crime type.

“It also makes a number of recommendations about further strengthening police and prosecution case management arrangements and information sharing to ultimately provide a greater and timelier support to victims,” the PSNI said.

Detective Chief Superintendent Lindsay Fisher of the PSNI’s Public Protection Branch said: “Much work has been undertaken already to address the societal issue of domestic abuse and this report has outlined our progress whilst also setting out a series of recommendations, all of which we accept as a Police Service. Anything we can do to better safeguard victims and children who are impacted by this terrible crime type, we will.

​“The report recognises the ‘comprehensive’ online training package that we developed to enhance our officers and staff knowledge of this complex crime type in order to achieve ‘timely and effective’ investigations. To date, thousands have undertaken this training and because of this it was noted how incident calls were being appropriately graded and the right systems and assessment tools utilised.

“We have since been focusing on fine tuning our response and ensuring we are making the most of all investigatory avenues available to us to get the best possible criminal justice outcomes.

“We have already further enhanced our training package and provided opportunities for frontline officers to hear directly from victims to better their understanding of the lived experience. We want to ensure that the voice of the victim and child are not lost and so in person district and Public Protection Branch training is also being delivered to ensure we maximise on every opportunity to use child aggravators and gather evidence.

“Information sharing with our partners is crucial and we will work as per the recommendations to streamline this so that opportunities to safeguard or learn/make improvements are not missed.

“Work has already commenced to look at the recommendations and we will seek to address all of them within the timescales.”

Justice Minister Naomi Long said: “I welcome the comprehensive report, which is largely positive in terms of the first two years since the Act became operational.

“Following the implementation of the Act there was a three per cent increase in the number of domestic abuse crimes recorded in 2022/23. Whilst 22,343 domestic abuse crimes in one year is still too high, the figures indicate the legislation is having an effect.”

She said the DoJ and NICTS have now commenced work on advancing the relevant recommendations contained within CJI’s report.

Ms Long added: “We will continue to work with criminal justice partners and stakeholders to raise further awareness of the domestic abuse offence.

“As the figures show, too many women, men and children continue to experience patterns of abusive behaviour including physical, emotional and financial abuse, therefore it is crucial we utilise the legislation to hold perpetrators to account.”