We Finally Joined the Dots on Domestic Abuse. So Why Are We Pulling Them Apart Again?
Something said on Good Morning Britain this morning stopped me in my tracks.
What Jess Phillips said on Good Morning Britain this morning should frighten every domestic abuse victim and every family who loves them
Something said on Good Morning Britain this morning stopped me in my tracks.
The discussion was about prisoners being released earlier to relieve pressure on overcrowded prisons and the effect this is having on victims.
We’ve already seen Government change the exclusions.
Rapists. Serious child sex offenders. Grooming offenders. Those convicted of unlawful killing and certain other offences.
Government listened to the backlash and decided that some offenders shouldn’t benefit from the new progression arrangements.
Fair enough.
Then domestic abuse came up.
And suddenly we arrived at the problem nobody seems to have properly solved.
Jess Phillips explained that domestic abuse isn’t easy to identify simply by looking at the offence somebody was convicted of.
She gave a very simple example.
Someone can be convicted of ABH after getting into a fight in a pub with somebody they’ve never met before.
Someone else can be convicted of ABH after subjecting their partner to years of coercive control, intimidation, threats and violence.
On paper, both convictions may say:
ABH.
In reality, they tell two completely different stories.
One may be an isolated assault between strangers.
The other may be one incident sitting inside years of domestic abuse.
And that is where I genuinely find myself asking:
What on earth are we doing?
Because haven’t we just spent years learning precisely this lesson?
Domestic abuse isn’t an offence label
We created the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 because we finally understood that domestic abuse isn’t simply “wife beating”.
It isn’t defined solely by bruises, broken bones or individual assaults.
Domestic abuse can include physical or sexual abuse, violent or threatening behaviour, controlling or coercive behaviour, economic abuse and psychological, emotional or other abuse.
Government’s own statutory guidance goes even further.
It tells professionals that controlling or coercive behaviour is a pattern.
It tells them to consider the cumulative impact of behaviour.
It specifically warns police and frontline professionals to look beyond the individual assault in front of them and consider whether there is a wider pattern of coercive control or other abuse.
It recognises isolation.
Financial control.
Threats.
Manipulation.
Using children.
Interfering with medication.
Preventing access to healthcare.
Monitoring.
Stalking behaviours.
Psychological harm.
Fear.
In other words:
ZOOM OUT.
Don’t just look at what happened on Tuesday night.
Look at what Tuesday night belongs to.
So why, when we reach the prison release stage, are we apparently having to learn the same lesson all over again?
GBH doesn’t stop being domestic abuse because the charge says GBH
This is the part I cannot get my head around.
If somebody has subjected their partner to years of coercive control and eventually seriously assaults them, the resulting ABH or GBH conviction doesn’t somehow detach that violence from the domestic abuse.
The violence is part of the domestic abuse**.**
The offence prosecuted may be GBH.
The context may be domestic abuse.
The risk comes from understanding both.
Yet Jess Phillips explained this morning that she wanted domestic abuse cases to be flagged precisely because offences such as ABH and GBH don’t automatically tell the system what sits behind them.
She said she wanted a specific process for those cases.
When she was asked whether that had happened, her answer was clear:
It had not.
That is terrifying.
Not because nobody thought of the problem.
Apparently they did.
The problem was identified.
The safeguard was wanted.
Yet prisoners are reaching the point of accelerated release while that joined-up system isn’t doing what was envisaged.
It gets even stranger
The Sentencing Act 2026 itself recognises this problem.
It introduces a statutory requirement for a court, when sentencing, to formally state where it finds that an offence involved domestic abuse.
Why?
Government explained the purpose when the legislation received Royal Assent.
The finding is intended to allow criminal justice agencies to identify domestic abusers, monitor them better and put appropriate measures in place to protect victims.
Read that again.
We have literally legislated to create a mechanism for identifying the domestic abuse context behind an offence.
Yet we’re now hearing that the system needed to flag all domestic abuse cases for release purposes hasn’t been fully put in place.
How disconnected can a system become?
One part of Government understands that the offence label isn’t enough.
Parliament legislates for a domestic abuse finding.
Domestic abuse guidance tells professionals to look at patterns.
Courts sentence offenders.
Then the prison release machinery comes along and we discover that identifying the domestic abuse sitting behind ABH or GBH is still a problem.
We’ve joined the dots in legislation and risk pulling them apart again in administration.
The victim doesn’t experience the offence in boxes
This is something bureaucracy repeatedly fails to understand.
A victim doesn’t experience:
“Coercive control.”
Then close that file.
“Stalking.”
Close that file.
“Criminal damage.”
Close that file.
“ABH.”
Close that file.
“Threats.”
Close that file.
They experience one perpetrator.
One continuing pattern.
The children experience it too.
So do parents.
Siblings.
Friends.
New partners.
Neighbours.
Work colleagues.
Domestic abuse doesn’t exist neatly between two adults behind a closed front door.
Children can be victims in their own right.
Families can spend years frightened about what a perpetrator may do next.
Some victims relocate.
Some change jobs.
Some change children’s schools.
Some alter their entire lives.
Some live with stalking and post-separation control.
Some are murdered.
Some children are killed.
And some victims ultimately die by suicide following prolonged abuse.
This isn’t simply about whether somebody has served enough punishment.
It’s about what happens when the prison door opens.
A tag doesn’t change a perpetrator’s mindset
Government’s information for victims talks about supervision following release and measures intended to protect victims and the public.
Those things matter.
Tagging matters.
Licence conditions matter.
Exclusion or restriction zones matter.
Probation matters.
Police involvement matters.
None of them changes the fundamental question:
Was it safe to release this particular person earlier in the first place?
Managing somebody after release isn’t the same thing as assessing the whole risk before release.
A GPS tag can tell somebody where a perpetrator is.
It isn’t a forcefield.
An exclusion zone draws a boundary.
It doesn’t create a wall.
Probation can supervise somebody.
It cannot stand beside every victim twenty-four hours a day.
That’s why understanding the perpetrator’s history before release matters so much.
And that history cannot begin with the conviction
Imagine somebody serving a sentence for ABH.
Before considering accelerated release, surely the questions shouldn’t stop at:
What was the offence?
How long was the sentence?
How have they behaved in prison?
Surely somebody needs to know:
Was this domestic abuse?
Was there coercive control?
Was there stalking?
Were there previous partners?
Were there previous allegations or convictions?
Were protection orders breached?
Were bail conditions breached?
Were threats made?
Was strangulation involved?
Were children used as part of the control?
Were children themselves at risk?
Was there economic abuse?
Was there obsessive behaviour after separation?
Were there threats of homicide or suicide?
What did police know?
What did probation know?
What did safeguarding know?
What did domestic abuse services know?
What did the court know?
What does the victim know?
And perhaps most importantly:
Has anybody actually put all of that information in one place?
Because if the answer is no, nobody is assessing the perpetrator.
They’re assessing fragments of them.
This is The Disconnected Helm
This is exactly the systemic problem we’ve been talking about for years.
Police have their information.
Courts have theirs.
Prisons have theirs.
Probation has theirs.
Safeguarding has theirs.
Domestic abuse services have theirs.
Victim services have theirs.
The family has theirs.
Everyone holds a piece.
Who holds the picture?
And who is personally accountable for saying:
“I have reviewed the whole history of this perpetrator and I am satisfied that releasing them earlier does not create an unacceptable risk to this victim, these children or this family.”
That’s the person I want to identify.
Because when everybody is responsible for one piece, it’s frighteningly easy for nobody to be responsible for the outcome.
Helen asked the only question that matters
The survivor interviewed on Good Morning Britain this morning, Helen, cut through all of the policy language.
She wanted to know how the Justice Secretary was going to guarantee her safety.
She asked how Government was going to ensure she didn’t become another statistic.
That is the question.
Not:
Did probation follow procedure?
Not:
Was the correct email generated?
Not:
Was the offender fitted with the right tag?
Not:
Was the release technically lawful?
The question is:
Is she safe?
Because a system can tick every box and still fail the human being those boxes were created to protect.
Then came another extraordinary comparison
Helen explained that after watching Queen Camilla’s documentary about domestic abuse, she wrote to her.
Queen Camilla wrote back personally, acknowledging her courage.
Helen’s point was devastatingly simple.
The Queen could find a way to communicate with her as a human being.
Yet the system responsible for releasing the person who abused her couldn’t provide the meaningful personal communication she needed about something directly affecting her safety.
This isn’t really about letters.
It’s about being seen.
A domestic abuse survivor isn’t a case number waiting for an automated release notification.
For somebody who has lived through years of coercion and fear, discovering that the person responsible is coming out earlier than expected can itself be profoundly destabilising.
They need information.
They need preparation.
They need somebody who knows their case.
They need somebody who understands the perpetrator.
They need to know what happens if something goes wrong.
They need to know somebody is actually watching the whole picture.
Bureaucracy Without Hope
That’s what I call this.
A system can function administratively while completely losing sight of why it exists.
Police investigate.
Prosecutors prosecute.
Courts convict.
Judges sentence.
Prisons imprison.
Government manages prison capacity.
Probation supervises.
Victim services support.
Safeguarding safeguards.
Every department can say:
“We did our job.”
Meanwhile the victim is sitting at home terrified because the perpetrator is coming out.
That isn’t a successful system.
That’s Bureaucracy Without Hope.
Government has already accepted that offence labels aren’t enough
This is why the current position deserves serious scrutiny.
The Government’s published exclusions from the Sentencing Act progression model include rape, serious child sexual and grooming offences, unlawful killing and other specified offences.
The progression model applies to people serving Standard Determinate Sentences. Those serving more serious sentences such as life sentences and Extended Determinate Sentences aren’t eligible for it in the first place.
So this isn’t an argument that everybody convicted of anything connected with domestic abuse must automatically remain imprisoned indefinitely.
It’s much more basic than that.
Domestic abuse risk has to be identifiable before release decisions are made.
Because “ABH” doesn’t tell you whether somebody punched a stranger in a pub or assaulted the person they’d already spent years controlling and terrorising.
That’s Jess Phillips’ point.
And she’s right.
So now Government needs to answer some very simple questions
Has every prisoner being considered for accelerated release been checked for a domestic abuse context?
If not, why not?
Where domestic abuse is identified, who conducts the risk assessment?
Does that person have access to the complete police, court, probation and safeguarding history?
Are previous partners considered?
Are children considered?
Are stalking and coercive control considered?
Are previous breaches considered?
Is the victim’s knowledge of the perpetrator actively sought?
Are domestic abuse specialists involved?
Is rehabilitation considered?
Who decides that the remaining risk is acceptable?
Who tells the victim?
Who explains the safety plan?
And if that decision proves catastrophically wrong:
Who is accountable?
We’ve already done the hard bit
Society spent decades trying to get people to understand that domestic abuse isn’t just a black eye.
We changed the law.
We recognised coercive control.
We recognised economic abuse.
We recognised psychological abuse.
We recognised children as victims.
We recognised patterns.
We told police to zoom out.
We told professionals to look at cumulative harm.
We finally started seeing the whole picture.
So please don’t tell victims that when their perpetrator reaches the prison release system we’re going back to reading the label on the box.
ABH.
GBH.
Criminal damage.
Threats.
Those may be the offences.
Domestic abuse may be the story connecting them.
And without that story, you cannot properly understand the risk.
This isn’t difficult to explain.
The law has learned to see the pattern.
The prison release system must see it too.
Before another prison door opens early, somebody needs to be able to answer one question:
WHO HAS SEEN THE WHOLE PICTURE?
Because if nobody has, we’re not managing risk.