By Cat Arundel - MIN Ambassador, 27.01.2025

It's A Crime

The law and domestic abuse 

Domestic abuse. That’s against the law, right? You’d be forgiven for thinking so, but domestic abuse in itself is not a specific crime in the UK. 

That’s not to say that domestic abuse is not recognised by the criminal justice system. The CPS (Crown Prosecution Service) are responsible for prosecuting criminal cases and they have a lead for domestic abuse, Kate Brown. She reported that ‘In the first quarter of 2024/25, domestic abuse accounted for 14.5% of our post-charge caseload.’ Yet when it comes to offences around domestic abuse, charges are made for crimes such as harrassment, assault, criminal damage and sexual assault. It may also include coercive control, which has been recognised as a specific criminal offence in UK law since 2015.

Time for change

CPS Crime Information on Domestic Abuse 

The figures around conviction rates for domestic abuse related cases show so much of it goes unheard. ‘An estimated 2.3m people were victims of domestic abuse in the year to March 2024, according to the Crime Survey for England and Wales. Just over two-thirds were women while 712,000 were men… The Office for National Statistics (ONS) research said 1.4m incidents of domestic abuse were recorded by police and, of these, 39,000 resulted in criminal convictions.’

There are many benefits to domestic abuse being recognised as a specific criminal offence. Firstly, it would be a clear message of how seriously such abuse is taken and would hopefully improve conviction rates. Domestic abuse is a complex issue and improving awareness of the many factors involved can only help to inform those in the criminal justice system and support better decisions. 

If people were convicted of domestic abuse it would also make recording offences more accurate and straightforward. Issues around recording recently came to light as a number of prisoners in England and Wales were released under an early release scheme. Some perpetrators of domestic abuse were included as the offences they were convicted for were not excluded. This adds to the anguish and stress of victims as well as putting them at physical risk.     

Personal experience to public duty 

Josh Babarinde, MP for Eastbourne, is the Liberal Democrats’ justice spokesperson. He has recently called for domestic abuse to be recognised as a specific crime and talked of support across the political spectrum. 

Josh speaks of how his own experiences of domestic abuse have influenced him. As a charity founded by a survivor of coercive control and post-separation abuse and with a number of lived experience leaders, we understand the courage it takes to do so. 

Domestic abuse cases rarely convicted 

You can read more about Josh's campaign here:

MP calls for specific domestic violence offence in England and Wales 

and see him talk about it here: 

Josh Babarinde MP on his domestic abuse bill 

The obvious answer

We can all agree that domestic abuse is wrong. No one has the right to hurt, humiliate, control or degrade their partner. Harassment, violence, threatening behaviour and coercive control may be amongst their tools, but we should be able to immediately recognise perpetrators of domestic abuse as domestic abusers. Charging them with the crime of domestic abuse seems an obvious place to start.