Domestic Abuse in the Year of Lockdowns: An Epidemic
Mark Twain once said “Never let the truth get in the way of a good story." It’s not uncommon to see a media narrative that is popular at one point being at a later point contradicted by real world data. A recent example of this is how repeatedly throughout 2020 there were reports of Covid lockdowns causing an increase in domestic abuse.[i]
The Narrative
Before the first English lockdown started, Women’s Aid were already predicting dire consequences for victims of domestic abuse. In August 2020 a joint Panorama/Women’s Aid investigation reported that domestic abuse surged in lockdown. The Guardian reported it thus, “The coronavirus crisis has dramatically compounded domestic violence against women, new research has revealed. Two-thirds of women in abusive relationships have suffered more violence from their partners during the pandemic.”
Nick Thomas-Symonds, in labour.org, wrote in November 2020 “ONS statistics out today reveal a rise in domestic abuse related offences during the first UK national lockdown when compared to the same period in previous years. They also reveal a huge increase in numbers of calls to support services.”
“…the Home Office and Ministry of Justice committed to making a total of £213M extra Government funding to domestic and sexual abuse services on the strength of the above narrative”
In June 2020, Human Rights Watch took aim at the ratification of the Istanbul Convention, writing, “The government of the United Kingdom is stalling on establishing a robust legal framework to address violence against women and girls even as reported domestic abuse spikes during the pandemic”. Not to be outdone in the representation of domestic carnage, on 1st February 2021, Under-Secretary of State for Justice, Alex Chalk, told us that “charities have reported a 200% increase in calls and people accessing webchat services since the first lockdown”.
In what might be a strong candidate for the nastiest misreporting on this issue, inews on 24 September 2021 ran a story with this headline, “Covid-19 and domestic violence: abusive men deliberately exposed wives and partners to virus, study finds”. The study cited, by University of Birmingham researchers, says no such thing. Actually the study suggests that higher rates of Covid infection may be related to “policies to allow the free movement of DVA survivors in attempts to minimise their exposure to abusive environments” and hence that, possibly, “a clinical-safeguarding paradox may exist whereby current policy action protecting survivors from further abuse may indeed increase their risk of COVID-19”. Not only does the study not say what inews reported, but it looked only at women. For all we know, an identical study conducted on men would produce similar findings. Consequently, the lurid inews headline could, for all we know, be re-written with the sexes reversed with equal veracity, or, rather, equal lack of veracity.
Finally, there’s the cash. In a series of announcements from April 2020 through February 2021, the Home Office and Ministry of Justice committed to making a total of £213M extra Government funding to domestic and sexual abuse services on the strength of the above narrative.
“I have obtained data on the numbers of reports of DVA-flagged incidents recorded by police in the last three complete calendar years via Freedom Of Information (FOI) enquiry.”
The Data
There are many ways to measure the prevalence of domestic abuse. One is to use police recorded incidents which were flagged as domestic violence/abuse (DVA) related. The advantages of this measure are that the statistics are very large, it is nationally relevant, and it is available for many years past.
I have obtained data on the numbers of reports of DVA-flagged incidents recorded by police in the last three complete calendar years via Freedom Of Information (FOI) enquiry. Of the 42 police forces in England and Wales, I have the requested data from 37 (one response with incomplete data). Of the other five forces, responses from two were inadequate, two forces refused to provide the data based on time and cost, and the remaining police force did not respond. These FOI data for 2018, 2019 and 2020, can be augmented by the comparable data for years 2012 to 2018 reported by Mankind Initiative.
Based on 37 police forces, the number of recorded DVA-flagged incidents increased from 827,087 in 2019 to 886,899 in 2020 (7.2% increase).
So, job done, then. Case proved.
Except it isn’t.
The number of DVA-flagged incidents recorded by the police has been increasing steadily every year since (at least) 2012. Between 2018 and 2019, based on the same 37 police forces, the number of recorded incidents increased by 47,654 (6.1%). This increase is steady and shows no sign of a significant increase due to lockdowns.i
The ONS themselves have cautioned against too naïve an interpretation of 2020 DVA data. In a data release on 25 November 2020, “Domestic abuse during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, England and Wales”, the ONS state immediately, “Police recorded crime data show an increase in offences flagged as domestic abuse-related during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, however, there has been a gradual increase in police recorded domestic abuse-related offences over recent years as police have improved their recording of these offences; therefore it cannot be determined whether this increase can be directly attributed to the coronavirus pandemic.” [ii]
Given this steady increase in DV incidents since at least 2012, the question that needs to be addressed is not whether DVA incidence increased in 2020 compared with 2019 (because that was to be expected) but whether any increase exceeded expectation based on trends. In fact, close inspection of the data reveals not only that most police forces reported smaller numbers of victims in 2020 than expected based on the trend in previous years, but more forces reported a larger percentage of male victims in 2020 than would be expected.[iii]
So what has been learned from the analysis of the FOI data? Firstly, recorded incidents of DV have been increasing across almost all police forces for at least a decade. The higher numbers in 2020 are just part of that existing pattern, and were not large enough to suggest a sharp increase due to lockdowns or any other factors in 2020. If anything, the numbers were slightly down for 2020, except for male victims, whose numbers were slightly up.
Scroll down to join the discussion
Footnotes
[i] To check that the trend of increasing DVA-flagged reports is stable and significant I have regressed the number for each force against year. 38 of the 42 police forces’ data have positive regression coefficients (slopes), indicative of a trend of increasing numbers of DVA reports to each of these 38 forces over the period 2012 to 2020. Of these 38 forces the coefficient is significant at the 95% confidence level in 25 cases. In 16 of these cases significance is at the 99.9% confidence level. Of the four forces which have negative regression coefficients (trend of decreasing reports), three are not statistically significant (p > 0.05).
[ii] In passing we note that CSEW survey based data indicate a decreasing or level prevalence of DVA up to 31 March 2020, based on the percentage of people victimised once or more in the preceding year. Note, however, that the FOI data here relate to incidents, not victims.
[iii] To address this I define an “Index Of Change” (IOC) which measures the amount by which the increase between 2019 and 2020 exceeds the increase between 2018 and 2019, suitably normalised. This can be done for each police force separately and for any of the quantities: (i) number of male victims (m), (ii) number of female victims (f), (iii) the total number of victims (including those for whom sex was not ascertained), or, (iv) the ratio of male to total victims of known sex, m/(m+f). Denoting the quantity of interest by X, the IOC is defined as (b – a)/X(2019), where a = |X(2019) – X(2018)| and b = X(2020) – X(2019). Multiplying by 100 gives the Index of Change as a percentage.
A positive IOC indicates that exceeded what would have been expected based on the trend between 2018 and 2019. Conversely, a negative IOC indicates that was less than what would have been expected based on the trend between 2018 and 2019. The magnitude of the IOC is the extent of the deviation from expectation expressed as a percentage of its value in 2019.
Table 1 shows how many of the individual police forces produce negative or positive IOCs for each of the four interpretations of the variable . When this is the number of male victims, the number of female victims or the total number of victims, there are more negative than positive Indices, indicating that there were more police forces which reported smaller numbers of victims in 2020 than expected based on the 2018 to 2019 trend than forces which reported more victims than expected.
An exception to this is when X is the percentage of victims who are male, where the reverse was the case (more forces reported a larger percentage than that based on trends).
If attention is confined to the total data summed over all responding police forces, the IOC was negative for female victims, but positive for male victims, total victims and percentage of male victims (Table 1).
Disclaimer: This article is for information purposes only and is not a substitute for therapy, legal advice, or other professional opinion. Never disregard such advice because of this article or anything else you have read from the Centre for Male Psychology. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of, or are endorsed by, The Centre for Male Psychology, and we cannot be held responsible for these views. Read our full disclaimer here.
Like our articles?
Click here to subscribe to our FREE newsletter and be first
to hear about news, events, and publications.
Have you got something to say?
Check out our submissions page to find out how to write for us.
.
