Crime statistics? Now why would journalists understand those?

[trigger warning]

So the BBC has an article on the number of women who have been convicted for domestic violence. It's as bad as you'd expect a BBC article to be.

It notes a rise in convictions of women for domestic violence between 2005 and 2010 from 1,500 to 4,000.

The article then goes on for several paragraphs speculating about why this might be, cultures of violence in women, etc.

In the final paragraph, after most readers will have got bored and wandered off, they note that in the same time period convictions of men committing domestic violence rose from 28,000 to 55,000 - not quite as large a proportionate rise, but still big.

Further penalty points, too, for their heteronormative assumption that all domestic violence is committed against someone of the 'opposite' gender to the attacker.

Domestic violence reduction is actually a relative success for our justice system and government - with the rates of assault significantly falling, and the rate of convictions significantly increasing. It remains a serious problem - around 300,000 incidents a year - but this is a third of what it was 15 years ago, and a vastly-increased proportion (now around 1 in 6) of those perpetrators are convicted (even if not all of them get appropriate sentences).

It's still really bad and there's much still to do - but there has been significant progress made. Not that you'd know that from this article.

Lots of quotes from un-named "some experts", too - presumably because no real expert would actually put their name to such uninformed speculation.

Here's the complaint that I sent them.

Regarding your article "Women's convictions for domestic violence 'double'", I found it to be poorly researched and sensationalist, leaving a key piece of context for the final paragraph, and ignoring obvious research that could easily answer some of the "experts say this" / "other experts say that" pseudo-debate in the article. By doing so, it gives a completely misleading impression, both about the extent of domestic violence generally, and the number of women committing it.

Firstly, convictions are not at a measure of the prevalence of crime. A doubling of convictions could mean twice as many crimes were being committed, or it could mean that the number of crimes was constant but the reporting rate had doubled, or it could mean that the reporting rate was constant but improvements in police and CPS procedure meant that the chances of a conviction had doubled. Or - more likely - some combination of the three.

Fortunately, the British Crime Survey is a long-standing statistical measure of crime, including domestic violence, and - together with other CPS and Police/Home Office statistics - can be used to answer this. A quick summary of the figures can easily be found by searching for "BCS Domestic Violence" - http://www.dewar4research.org/DOCS/DVGovtStatsAug09.pdf for instance

It shows that - far from increasing, the rates of domestic violence against both men and women have been generally decreasing. The proportion of victims who were male is also roughly the same as it has been over the last decade.

Secondly, the key piece of context - that there had also been a massive increase in convictions for domestic violence in general and by men specifically - is left for the last paragraph. This is a key piece of context, which strongly suggests that much of the increase is due to improvements in prosecution and investigation - contrary to the suggestions in the early paragraphs - and yet it is buried at the bottom of the page where relatively few readers will see it.

This news of a massive increase in convictions for men is not accompanied by "some experts" wondering if it is part of a "growing culture of violence" among men - despite the 2005 number for men being seven times the 2010 number for women.

Thirdly, the article assumes throughout that all male victims of domestic violence were attacked by women, and vice versa. This is obviously not the case, but the article implies it anyway.

Please let me know what steps will be taken to ensure that such basic mistakes in reporting on crime statistics do not recur in future.

Infidelity as a partial defence for murder

The BBC reports on the difference of opinion between the Commons and the Lords on whether infidelity should be a partial defence for murder (and so make it manslaughter rather than murder, for instance).

What's happened is that the Commons passed this particular bit of legislation a while ago, so it went on to the Lords. The Lords amended it to take out the clauses that prevented infidelity from being a partial defence. The Commons have now put those clauses back. It's a small victory.

[trigger warning]

In the (short) Lord's debate, the voting was very much on party lines, with all the Lib Dem and Conservative Lords voted for the amendment, as did most of the independents. All but one Labour Lord voted against it.

In the Commons, the vote split slightly differently, with all (present) Labour MPs voting to put the clause back, all Conservative MPs voting to keep it out, and the Lib Dems largely abstaining. David Howarth (Lib Dem MP for Cambridge) proposed an amendment that would have changed the terms but not significantly. The debate in the Commons has Claire Ward (Labour MP for Watford) setting out the reasons this is necessary very clearly.

It will mainly be a symbolic victory if this stays in the final bill: after all, a judge who agrees despite the letter of the law that infidelity should be a defence can always impose a lighter sentence, and many will. The arguments against its inclusion that were made in the Commons and Lords, however, expose an unstated assumption: the claim by the Conservatives and the Lib Dem Lords is that whether infidelity is a partial defence should be up to the jury for that case, but for that to be true requires that there should be a significant number of existing cases - not just a "it might happen" - where infidelity is a legitimate reason for "losing control"¹ to the extent of murder.

This is what most of the Lords believed, and the Conservative MPs in the Commons. It may well be an attitude shared by many jurors, but that doesn't make it right. It essentially is preserving an existing expectation that infidelity is (and should be) punishable by death in at least some circumstances: an attitude that we're very quick to condemn in other countries if it's the state rather than the partner (despite Lord Gresford's claim based on the sample of cases he remembers, it is usually the male partner) that carries out the execution.

Let's not pretend either that most of these cases of murder won't have been preceded by some other forms of abuse, including violence. This isn't usually going to be someone who "just snapped", it's going to be someone who has been previously violent. (and because of the victim-blaming culture around abuse and domestic violence, which the [...] are trying to reinforce, and the extents to which abusers conceal their activities, and other people try not to notice them, this fact may only be known by the now dead victim). Jack Straw points out that the existence of a murder charge in the first place implies intent to cause serious harm.

¹ Now, everyone handles anger differently, but I think that if someone gets angry enough to kill or seriously injure someone, in a situation that was not before their violence a threat to anyone's life or safety, then future public safety is best served by their incarceration - one of the few cases where imprisonment is necessary. "losing control" implies that they had as much control over their actions as someone who skids their car on an invisible patch of ice and runs into a pedestrian before they can stop, and is not an appropriate phrase.

No recourse to public funds

I mentioned the No Recourse to Public Funds mass lobby of Parliament last week. Living up in the North, there's no chance of getting down to London on a weekday. Amnesty International have a page of alternative actions - here's the text of the letter to my local Councillors based on their suggestions.

Under the "no recourse to public funds" rule it is not possible for many non-citizens to claim benefits such as housing benefit and income support. An unpleasant consequence of this rule is that people trapped in an abusive relationship are often unable to use shelters for the victims of domestic violence, as they are unable to claim the benefits that the refuges use for funding, which would be available to UK citizens who were victims of domestic violence.

Could you please tell me:

1. What measures Durham County Council has in place to ensure that victims of domestic violence who are affected by the "no recourse to public funds" rule are able to access the services that they require.
2. What pressure the Council is placing on central government to ensure that its costs for providing these services are covered.
3. What steps the Council plans to take more generally to improve the range of services available for victims of domestic violence.

WriteToThem provides contact forms for your Councillors as well as MPs, which makes this a bit easier.

"Frustration is no defence and no mitigation"

So said Judge Cutler, sentencing to jail a man who drove a car through a supermarket, injuring six women, one seriously, after a dispute over purchased goods.

I wonder if that principle will be applied in future to the perpetrators of domestic violence, who often cause far more serious injuries on multiple occasions, but are let off with a sentence lower than the 16 months that Mr Caton received for this. I fear it will not.

It starts very young

[trigger warning]

From BBC News, the results of an NSPCC and Lottery-funded report on violence in teenage relationships. 90% of teenagers (13 to 17) have been in an intimate relationship. Of those:

One in six [girls] said they had been pressured into sexual intercourse and 1 in 16 said they had been raped. Others had been pressured or forced to kiss or sexually touch.

A quarter of girls had suffered physical violence such as being slapped, punched, or beaten by their boyfriends.

[...]

Girls also reported that they suffered more repeatedly in relationships and at a younger age.

[...]

Unlike most boys, girls often felt they had little choice but to put up with the abuse because they felt scared, guilty, or feared they would lose their boyfriend.

It's not, perhaps, surprising that violence in relationships starts so young, and occurs in teens as much as it does in adults. This, though, is apparently the first detailed study of it, which did surprise me. I wonder if any follow-up studies on younger children are planned.

It makes it very obvious that people need teaching very early - before 90% of them have already been in a relationship - what a healthy relationship looks like and what an abusive relationship looks like. Expecting them to learn by example just doesn't work.

(It's not clear from the NSPCC press release whether the report considered same-sex relationships, since all the examples they give are heterosexual, and I can't find the report itself on their website)

Edited to add: A comment at the F-Word article gives the report. Currently only the executive summary is available. It's worth reading (and yes, they did cover same-sex relationships)

That's mitigation?

[trigger warning - domestic violence]

From BBC News, a man has been given a 350-day suspended sentence for poisoning his ex-wife with mercury. The sentence is rather light for the crime (even if he did plead guilty, was of previous good character, etc.)

The judge's decision wasn't what most got to me about the story. It actually gets worse...

Paul Lewis, for the defendant, said in mitigation that Dowling had "only intended to annoy his wife so she would feel the need for him to care for her and so resurrect their relationship".

Mr Lewis suggested that because Mrs Dowling was still able to work as a cleaner, she had overplayed her symptoms.

So, the defence is basically saying: "in mitigation, my client is dangerously manipulative and completely lacking in empathy, and he was stopped before the poisoning reached fatal levels.". That's mitigation? That's the argument intended to reduce sentencing?

And from the judge, while sentencing:

"What is relevant is that you are not a medical expert and it follows from that that it was more by good luck than anything else that your wife did not suffer serious harm," said [Judge Robert Brown]

So... it's okay to poison your ex-wife as long as you read up on the options for poison in advance and ensure you pick one that will not have too many long-term side effects despite repeated application.

I wish this refusal to take domestic violence seriously was atypical.