Police set up taskforce to crack down on domestic abuse

It follows the pioneering establishment of Strathclyde's violence reduction unit, which is now a national centre of excellence.

As part of the campaign against domestic violence over the Christmas period, divisions within Strathclyde Police have identified the most persistent offenders, and officers across the force will be working with the new taskforce on a range of measures including visiting offenders'homes to ensure they are abiding by bail conditions.

Each of the force's eight geographical divisions has already identified dozens of persistent offenders to target during the Christmas period. This part of the campaign will end in January, but the emphasis on domestic violence and the work of the unit will become a permanent feature of the force.

In the past year the force has been pro actively policing bail conditions by visiting the perpetrators of domestic abuse, and have arrested 170 people for breaching their conditions as a result.

The force is also piloting the banning of alcohol as a bail condition in cases where it has been an aggravating factor.

"Domestic abuse is a crime," said Stephen House, chief constable of Strathclyde. "We will put offenders in touch with agencies that can help to change their behaviour but let's not kid ourselves: these people are criminals and this behaviour is completely unacceptable.

"We are setting up a domestic abuse taskforce to deal with persistent offenders. Some 59% of those involved in domestic abuse are repeat offenders.

"We know from the research that most domestic abuse victims contact the police only after they have been assaulted between 20 and 30 times. So in a way they are all repeat offenders but we will be targeting those who pose the greatest risk.

"The whole thrust of the force is violence reduction. We acknowledge that we have rightly put a lot of effort into supporting the victims through initiatives like the domestic abuse court, but that now we want to put more into tracking down the repeat offenders.

"The peak period for domestic abuse is the Christmas holidays.

"If there is an escalating cycle of abuse we need to intervene early to make an arrest. The aim is to use the expertise of the unit to prevent the abuse and prevent violence from escalating into murder."

Across Scotland there were nearly 49,655 incidents of domestic violence recorded in Scotland last year, the vast majority against women, a 2% increase on the previous year.

In Strathclyde alone last year there were 25,000 incidents of domestic abuse across the force area - one every 22 minutes.

Mr House described it as a "horrendous number".

In the past four years the force has dealt with some 40,203 repeat offenders.

Mr House has chosen Detective Chief Inspector Peter McPike to head the new taskforce.

"A big part of what we are going to do is in bringing on board the CID experience we have," said Mr McPike.

"This means we will have more time and specialist resources dedicated to this and to collecting evidence.

"We have also put together a matrix to risk assess perpetrators based on the threat posed to their family."

Campbell Corrigan, acting chief constable, said: "Across the divisions we are identifying the most risky people - and that is not just based on the frequency of their offending, but will use a formula of risk assessment to look at escalation and other factors."

Mhairi McGowan, the service manager at Assist advocacy services, said: "The increased targeting of offenders will ensure the sending of a very clear message that domestic abuse is unacceptable and will I hope, lead to increased reporting of domestic abuse incidents."

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