Domestic homicide reviews and domestic abuse related death reviews (FOI ref: 453A/25)
Request
1) The number of deaths of women referred by the force to be considered for domestic homicide reviews/domestic abuse related death reviews between 2019-2024.
2) How many of the referrals identified in response to question 1 resulted in the review process being undertaken and how many did not.
Response
Please see figures below and note:
It has not been possible to provide information for 2019 due to the way records were stored across various folders on our systems at the time. However, in 2020, record-keeping practices were enhanced. The data below has been compiled from a self-maintained spreadsheet and is verified to the best of our knowledge.
Additionally, in May 2023, we implemented suicide surveillance measures aimed at identifying suicides potentially linked to domestic abuse. Subsequently, the number of referrals began to rise and as recently documented by VKPP, suicide is the main cause of death in domestic abuse relationships, rather than homicide, and has been for the last two years.
2019 – Unable to provide
2020 – Nine referred, seven accepted, two not accepted.
2021 – Seven referred, five accepted, two not accepted.
2022– 15 referred, 14 accepted, one not accepted.
2023 – 17 referred, 14 accepted, two unable to confirm, one not accepted.
2024 – 21 referred, 19 accepted, two unable to confirm.
Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that this data has been extracted from a number of data sources used by forces for police purposes. The detail collected to respond specifically to your request may be subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large scale recording system. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when interpreting the data.
The figures provided therefore are our best interpretation of data which has relevance to your request, but you should be aware that the collation of figures for ad hoc requests may have limitations and this should be taken into account when those data are used.
If you decide to write an article / use the enclosed data we would ask you to take into consideration the factors highlighted in this document so as to not mislead members of the public or official bodies, or misrepresent the relevance of the whole or any part of this disclosed material.