Implementing a perpetrator-focused partnership approach to tackling domestic abuse: The opportunities and challenges of criminal justice localism
| Date | 01 September 2018 |
| Author | Paul Biddle,Pamela Ann Davies |
| Published date | 01 September 2018 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1748895817734590 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1748895817734590
Criminology & Criminal Justice
2018, Vol. 18(4) 468 –487
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/1748895817734590
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Implementing a
perpetrator-focused
partnership approach to
tackling domestic abuse: The
opportunities and challenges of
criminal justice localism
Pamela Ann Davies
Northumbria University, UK
Paul Biddle
Northumbria University, UK
Abstract
This article reports on a perpetrator-focused partnership approach to tackling domestic
abuse. The package of interventions includes an identification tool and a unique multi-agency
partnership approach to violence prevention and tackling abuse through perpetrator-focused
early interventions. An overview of the key outcomes and issues emerging from this innovative
package and partnership approach in one policing area in England is offered. Our discussion
focuses on issues relating to the development of the co-ordination of the multi-agency tasking
and co-ordination (MATAC) approach to addressing domestic abuse, particularly within the
context of the opportunities and challenges of the localism agenda in criminal justice. Perceived
concerns within the MATAC partnership, about victim safety alongside a heightened ‘focus on
perpetrators’, caused us to critically reflect on the convergence of the politics of multi-agency
working at very local levels. Our conclusion is that partnership working remains important in
the shifting economic and political context in which local agenda setting and commissioning is
occurring. The local still matters, and is as challenging as it ever was, in ensuring victim safety.
Keywords
Domestic violence, localism, multi-agency, partnership, perpetrator, safety, victim
Corresponding author:
Pamela Ann Davies, Professor of Criminology, Department of Social Sciences, Northumbria University,
Lipman Building, Newcastle, NE18ST, UK.
Email: pamela.davies@northumbria.ac.uk
734590CRJ0010.1177/1748895817734590Criminology & Criminal JusticeDavies and Biddle
research-article2017
Article
Davies and Biddle 469
Introduction
Responses to domestic abuse cannot be divorced from the social context within which it
occurs and traditional criminal justice responses have increasingly been combined with
other preventive measures often involving multi-agency approaches to tackling the prob-
lem (Brookman and Robinson, 2012). The increasingly sophisticated response has seen
investment in specialist services for women victims of domestic abuse in order to pro-
vide better support through the criminal justice process and through to recovery. The
commitment to the multi-agency approach has become well established. Though we
argue that the local still matters as much as it ever did in ensuring victim safety and tack-
ling domestic abuse and that partnership working remains essential, we also suggest this
is increasingly challenging because of how localism is conceptualized and implemented
and in part due to a postcode lottery. Thus, what we discuss has wider relevance. This
article reports on a package of domestic violence perpetrator interventions used in one
locality. It provides an overview of the key outcomes of a partnership approach to tack-
ling domestic abuse and reduce risk for victims. The discussion, and our reflection,
focuses on perceived concerns about victim safety in the context of a heightened ‘focus
on perpetrators’ and the politics of the local multi-agency tasking and co-ordination
(MATAC) partnership.
We commence by outlining the historical commitment to partnership working in the
context of community safety over the last three decades. We draw out how this approach
is well established in the context of violence reduction and how multi-agency working is
integral to strategies to tackle it. We evidence the historical importance of ‘localism’ and
how collaboration and localism have been championed by politicians across the political
spectrum who have argued that it enables more responsive service provision that better
meets the needs of service users. We then illustrate the benefits and challenges of con-
temporary localism in tackling domestic abuse with particular emphasis on the politici-
zation of community safety, mixed sector provisions of services and co-ordinated
developments to tackle domestic abuse outside formal criminal justice responses. We
then describe the various components of the local project and the methodology for evalu-
ating it. Key findings are reported leading into a discussion that dwells on perceived
concerns about victim safety in the context of a heightened ‘focus on perpetrators’. This
we found, can produce tensions where local partnerships are predisposed to focus on
risk, the targeting and control of serial perpetrators, detection and prosecution at the
same time as they recognize that changing perpetrators’ behaviour is the longer-term
solution to violence reduction and increasing women’s safety. We also dwell on how the
MATAC partnership has attuned itself to victim safety alongside the heightened ‘focus
on perpetrators’. Tackling domestic abuse in such a synchronized way demands highly
effective communication and information sharing and these issues feature in the final
part of our discussion of the MATAC partnership. Here we fully embrace the views
espoused over 10 years ago by Follett (2006: 107) who argues that analysing community
safety must always recognize the importance of local contexts including ‘understanding
local politics, local government and other local contextual elements’. From a critical and
feminist informed criminological perspective we ultimately argue, that politics is every-
where in community safety.
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