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Coercive control: Patterns in crimes, arrests and outcomes for a new domestic abuse offence

Brennan, Iain; Myhill, Andy

Authors

Andy Myhill



Abstract

Critics of the criminalization of coercive control warned that the criminal justice system was ill-prepared for a conceptualization of domestic abuse that relies on victim accounts of fear and manipulation rather than on evidence of violence. Using data obtained through Freedom of Information requests to police forces and aggregated police records, this paper presents police force-level and nationwide patterns in recorded crimes, police arrests and crime outcomes for this new crime and shows that, nationally, the number of recorded crimes and arrests rose steadily in its first three years, but there was significant variation in these patterns between police forces. Analysing police outcomes, we demonstrate that coercive control crimes face greater procedural challenges and are far less likely to result in prosecution than domestic abuse crimes in general. We discuss the implications of these trends and findings for the policing and criminalization of coercive control.

Citation

Brennan, I., & Myhill, A. (2022). Coercive control: Patterns in crimes, arrests and outcomes for a new domestic abuse offence. The British journal of criminology, 62(2), 468-483. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azab072

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Jun 22, 2021
Online Publication Date Jul 31, 2021
Publication Date Mar 1, 2022
Deposit Date Jun 21, 2021
Publicly Available Date Aug 1, 2023
Journal British Journal of Criminology
Print ISSN 0007-0955
Electronic ISSN 1464-3529
Publisher Oxford University Press
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 62
Issue 2
Article Number azab072
Pages 468-483
DOI https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azab072
Keywords Coercive control; Domestic abuse; Policing
Public URL https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/3792239

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Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (ISTD). All rights reserved.






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