The Crime Survey for England and Wales for the year ending March 2017 shows nearly 2 million adults experienced domestic abuse in England and Wales, according to a major new report from Office for National Statistics (ONS).

The report brings together data on domestic abuse and its consequences from across police forces, the government and victim support organisations. This is the second annual report that brings these data together in one place and has been produced in response to a call from HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) for better information that enables more thorough analysis of how domestic abuse is dealt with in individual force areas.

The figures from the Crime Survey for England and Wales for the year ending March 2017 reveal that 1.2 million women and 713,000 men reported being the victims of some form of domestic abuse in the previous year. However, a large proportion of these victims would not have reported their abuse to the police.

There were 1.1 million reports of domestic abuse that were recorded by the police over the same period, these may include repeat occurrences for some victims and therefore this number cannot be compared with the number of victims estimated by the crime survey. Of these 1.1 million reports, 488,000 were recorded as crimes.

HMICFRS data on numbers of arrests by the police in crimes that are domestic abuse-related suggest that less than half of the crimes recorded by the police result in an arrest.

Of the domestic abuse cases referred to the Crown Prosecution Service by police, just under three-quarters (72%) resulted in a decision to charge and of cases that went to court, 76% led to convictions.

Women were the victims in around three-quarters of domestic abuse-related crimes recorded by the police and were overwhelmingly the majority of victims in cases of murder or manslaughter related to domestic abuse – 70% of cases between April 2013 and March 2016.

Alexa Bradley, from ONS, said:

“Domestic abuse is a particularly difficult problem to tackle, not least because victims may be reluctant to report abuse or to support action against their abusers.

“Because of this we have sought to go beyond the headline official statistics and bring together a wider array of information from all stages of the criminal justice process.

“This report aims to assist local services by giving a clearer picture of the scale of domestic abuse, how the police and justice system deals with cases of abuse and to shine a light on this important area of public policy.”

Alongside the statistical bulletin, there is a Domestic Abuse Statistics Data Tool published today, allowing data for each police force to be explored and compared. These products are primarily aimed at the agencies who come into contact with domestic abuse, to assist them in thinking about how they can improve their response to domestic abuse.

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