Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to ensure that domestic violence perpetrators are routinely tracked, managed and supervised.

People who have been convicted of one of the offences specified in Schedule 15 to the Criminal Justice Act 2003, including stalking involving fear of violence or serious alarm or distress, assault occasioning actual bodily harm, and wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, and who have been sentenced to 12 months or more of imprisonment or youth detention or who have been detained under the Mental Health Act 1983, are automatically managed under Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA). Of those people, those who pose a higher risk of harm - where formal multi-agency meetings are held to inform the shared Risk Management Plan - are included on the ViSOR Dangerous Persons Database.

People who do not meet those criteria, but who have been convicted or cautioned for, or reprimanded or warned about, an offence which indicates that they pose a risk of serious harm to the public, and who are considered by the MAPPA agencies to require the active involvement of several agencies via regular multi-agency public protection meetings, are also managed under MAPPA and included on ViSOR. Additionally, a person who has not been convicted of an offence, but whose behaviour gives reasonable grounds for believing that there is a likelihood of them committing an offence which will cause serious harm (known as a Potentially Dangerous Person), may also be included on ViSOR.

The College of Policing has issued guidance to police forces on the ‘Identification, assessment and management of serial or potentially dangerous domestic abuse and stalking perpetrators’. The key principles set out that forces should have processes in place to identify serial or potentially dangerous domestic abuse or stalking perpetrators and ensure that information about the perpetrator is recorded on the Police National Computer, the Police National Database or ViSOR as appropriate.

HM Prison and Probation Service has published a Domestic Abuse Policy Framework which sets out the arrangements for working with people whose convictions or behaviours include domestic abuse. The framework mandates adherence to the referral pathways for domestic abuse perpetrators and ensures that the expectations for its work in those cases is laid out clearly and comprehensively.

In January 2020 the Government introduced Stalking Protection Orders, which allow magistrates’ courts to impose prohibitions and positive requirements on a person if they are necessary to protect another person from a risk associated with stalking. The Domestic Abuse Bill will introduce Domestic Abuse Protection Orders, which will include similar provisions, including specific provision for electronic tagging.