Domestic Homicide Oversight Mechanism for the Criminal Justice System: Briefing Paper

Chantler, Khatidja ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9129-2560, Baker, Victoria, Heyes, Kim ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9029-545X and Gunby, Clare ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8428-6621 (2023) Domestic Homicide Oversight Mechanism for the Criminal Justice System: Briefing Paper. In: Domestic Homicide Oversight Mechanism: HALT study briefings. Research Report. Domestic Abuse Commissioner, London.

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Abstract

In England and Wales, criminal law responses to Domestic Violence and Abuse (DVA) have advanced significantly in the last fifteen years. Prior to the Serious Crime Act (2015) and introduction of the offence of ‘coercive control’, domestic abuse did not exist as a crime in law but was dealt with as part of a set of existing legal provisions. The introduction of coercive control criminalised specifically the repeated patterns of coercive behaviour that typify victims’ experiences (Stark, 2007), communicating firmly that DVA was much more than physical violence.