§ Mr. CoxTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many convictions of(a) men and (b) women there have been for offences involving domestic violence in the last 12 months. [32122]
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§ Beverley HughesOffences involving domestic violence are not identifiable on the Home Office Court Proceedings database as no specific statute covers such offences.
Prosecutions brought might range from common assault to homicide depending on the level of violence, and as the circumstances of the offences for which prosecutions are brought are not collected centrally, offences involving domestic violence cannot be distinguished from other offences within these categories.
Despite the lack of centrally collated statistics, there are justified concerns that incidents of domestic violence too often fail to result in prosecutions. We have introduced a number of measures to reduce the attrition rate for domestic violence offences and to bring more offenders to justice.
These include: Guidance for prosecutors issued by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in November and to police in 2000 encouraging them to work closely together to enhance evidence gathering, reducing the reliance on the victim's evidence. A number of the Crime Reduction Programme Violence Against Women projects are supporting women through the Criminal Justice System and aiming to empower women to use both civil and criminal remedies. The Metropolitan police service and Crown Prosecution Service are examining a number of domestic violence homicides that have taken place, in an attempt to establish where agency responses might be improved to prevent similar tragedies, and any lessons to be learned by the Criminal Justice System. Our attrition target is to bring 100,000 more offenders to justice. Given that domestic violence accounts for almost a quarter of all violent crime, a significant number of those offenders will be domestic violence perpetrators.