What is coercive control and why is it so difficult to recognize?

a post by Charlotte Barlow, Sandra Walklate and Kelly Johnson for the OUP blog


“Grayscale Photograph of Woman Touching Her Eyes” by Juan Pablo Arenas. CC0 via Pexels

Engaging in controlling and/or coercive behaviour in intimate or familial relationships became a new criminal offence in England and Wales in December 2015.

Coercive Control involves a pattern of abuse that is used to harm, punish, or frighten the victim.

Example behaviours included in this legislation are

• isolation from friends and family,
• deprivation of basic needs,
• monitoring behaviour and time,
• controlling a victim’s life and/or finances, and
• may include physical violence.

The introduction of this offence was welcomed for recognising the cumulative impact of various forms of domestic abuse and for encouraging police and other criminal justice agencies to move beyond an incident-led and physical violence-based understanding of domestic abuse.

However, four years on since the legislation was enacted and with no compulsory national level training or support, what has actually changed?

Coercive control as an offence carries implications for how we record and understand coercive control and domestic abuse victimisation more broadly in the UK. Despite recent figures suggesting an increase in recorded crimes of coercive control (from approximately 4,000 in 2016-17 to over 9,000 in 2018-19), prosecutions and convictions for the offence remain consistently low.

This is in contrast to other domestic-abuse related crimes, namely those that result in actual bodily harm, which are 20% more likely to result in an arrest and a charge.

Furthermore, the Office for National Statistics recently removed coercive and controlling behaviour questions from the Crime Survey for England and Wales because of uncertainty as to whether the questions were adequately capturing victims of the offence.

Continue reading

See also:
Putting Coercive Control into Practice: Problems and Possibilities
Charlotte Barlow, Kelly Johnson, Sandra Walklate, Les Humphreys
The British Journal of Criminology, azz041,
Full text (PDF 20pp)

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Yes, you can be “strong” and still be a victim of coercive control

an article by Suzanne Jacob published in the New Statesman

A judge said Lauren Smith was too “strong and capable” to be affected by the behaviour of her ex-boyfriend.



For three years, it has been a crime to control someone close to you in your life. When the legislation was passed in December 2015, professionals and survivors hoped that the criminal justice system finally understood the impact and seriousness of this kind of behaviour. Anyone who has been a victim of abuse, or seen it first hand, knows power and control are at the heart of it. But to see it written down in law was a positive step to taking it seriously and, crucially, holding the perpetrator to account.

Three years later, we see once again that legislation alone is not the answer. A recent court case considered the experience of Lauren Smith, whose ex-boyfriend spat in her face and taught her one-year-old son to call her a “slag” and a “slut”. But in her ruling, judge Helen Cousins described Lauren Smith, as too “strong and capable” to be affected by the behaviour of the perpetrator, despite the court being satisfied that control and coercion did occur within the relationship. “There’s no doubt the victim is a strong and capable woman, whose evidence was truthful. She has since successfully removed herself from the harmful situation,” Cousins said. “It is to her credit that I cannot find the defendant’s behaviour had a serious effect on her in the context of the guidelines for this offence.” 

These comments show a worrying misunderstanding of the dynamics of domestic abuse.

Continue reading and please try to keep you temper in check!

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Practitioner (mis)understandings of coercive control in England and Wales

an article by Amanda L Robinson (Cardiff University, UK) and Andy Myhill and Julia Wire (College of Policing, UK) published in Criminology & Criminal Justice Volume 18 Issue 1 (February 2018)

Abstract

Coercive control is harmful behaviour recently criminalized in England and Wales. The extent to which the work of practitioners is informed by an understanding of coercive control therefore requires investigation.

Using data from two mixed methods multi-site studies, this article suggests that practitioners’ recognition of coercive control does not seem to be universally poor or skilled, but rather depends on the characteristics of the situation itself, the organizational context in which practitioners work and the stage at which they are evaluating whether coercive control is present.

The absence of a clear understanding of the importance of coercive control when making judgements about victims and perpetrators has serious implications for the efficacy of current approaches to domestic abuse.

Purposeful and systematic efforts to support practitioners to recognize and respond effectively to coercive control are required.

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