Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018: interim reporting requirement

10. Methodology, Scope and Limitations

To meet the Reporting Requirement(Section 14) the Scottish Government produced/gathered both statistical and qualitative data. These are:

1. Criminal justice statistics - to meet the requirement as set out in Section 14:2 (a),(b),(c),(d),(e); and Section 14:3 (a),(b) (in part)

2. Evidence on victim and witness experiences of domestic abuse court cases - to meet the requirement as set out in Section 14 2(f)

Some of the statistical data is not yet currently available and will be reported on separately in a final report in 2023. The schedule for data reporting is set out in Annex 3.

To meet Section 14(4), the Scottish Government also sought information from the Lord President of the Court of Session on how court business is arranged, including in different areas or types of court, so as to ensure the efficient disposal of cases involving those sorts of offences. This is detailed in Chapter 9.

It was not within the scope of the Reporting Requirement to undertake a systematic review of the academic literature or to include evidence and/or data published by other organisations. However, wider research is referenced where deemed appropriate.

Criminal Justice Statistics

The data required to meet the statistical elements of the Reporting Requirement comes from three sources:

- Criminal Proceedings in Scotland National Statistics Scottish Government bulletin

- Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service (SCTS) Disposals dataset

- SCTS Journey Times dataset

Whilst part of the data needed to meet the Reporting Requirement is available to be published here, the remainder of the data is not yet available and will follow in a final, second report which will be laid in Parliament in 2023. Annex 3 provides further detail on the timetable for publishing the statistical data.

Evidence on Victim and Witness Experiences of Domestic Abuse Court Cases

A combination of surveys and interviews were used to meet Section 14 2(f) of the reporting requirement. The research was conducted in accordance with Scottish Government social research ethical standards. The survey research aimed to capture a broad range of views from adult victims and witnesses, whilst the interview research sought to explore experiences in more depth and included children and young people. The research ran from 2021-22 and comprised of three research projects which are briefly described below.

1. An online survey for female victims of domestic abuse (and stalking) – the survey was completed by 29 women (whose initial contact with the criminal justice system was made after 1st April 2019), of which 12 cases were referred to court and five cases had gone to trial at the time of writing. The survey was open from May to September 2021 and was undertaken by the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research (SCCJR). The report was published in August this year.

Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018 and the Criminal Justice System: Women's experiences two years in the emerging findings (Lombard et al., 2022)

2. An online survey for male victims of domestic abuse – The survey was completed by 18 men whose initial contact with the criminal justice system was made after 1st April 2019, of which 3 cases (against their partner/ex-partner) and 4 cases (against them) were referred to court. The survey was open from July to September 2021. It was adapted from the SCCJR women's survey and undertaken by Scottish Government researchers. The report is published on the same day as this reporting requirement.

The Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018: emerging findings of male victims' experiences of the Criminal Justice System (Scottish Government, 2022c)

3. In-depth qualitative research with adult and child victim/witnesses – The research involved 22 in-depth qualitative interviews with victims and witnesses of domestic abuse, including five children and young people, two men, 11 women and four young adult complainers, of which all cases were referred to court. Twelve participants were involved in Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018 cases and 14 were involved in cases with a domestic abuse aggravator. The fieldwork ran from November 2021 to April 2022 and was undertaken by the Universities of Edinburgh and Stirling. The report is published on the same day as this reporting requirement.

Domestic Abuse Court Experiences Research: The perspectives of victims and witnesses in Scotland (Houghton et al., 2022)

The research findings were reviewed by children and young people with lived experience of domestic abuse. They helped design a user-friendly booklet and summarise the research findings they felt were most important. This is also being published on the same day as the reporting requirement.

Justice, Safety and Support: what children and adults told researchers about the new law on domestic abuse. (Scottish Government, 2022d)

Full descriptions of the research questions and methodologies employed for each research study are provided in the individual research reports (accessed via the above hyperlinks).

Scope and Limitations

Scope

There are a number of considerations in relation to the scope of the evidence gathered for this report. These are summarised below:

• Most of the statistical data presented in this report covers the first two years of the reporting period: 2019-20 and 2020-21. The remaining data will be published separately in a final report next year.
• Although the emphasis was on court experiences in order to meet the reporting requirement, the research on victim and witness experiences also covered other stages relevant to experiences of domestic abuse court cases including reporting abuse, preparing for court and views on sentencing. This approach was in line with best practice on measuring victims' experiences of justice^[46], and enabled a victim-centred approach^[47].
• As per the reporting requirement, the research and data covers both DASA Section 1 offences and domestic abuse aggravator charges. The research covers experiences of victims that made a report of domestic abuse to the Police after 1 April 2019.
• As directed by the reporting requirement, the focus of the research was on victim and witness experiences only and does not therefore cover the views of other actors in the justice system e.g. justice professionals and support organisations.
• Case details in the research, particularly the surveys, are mostly drawn from victims' recollections and understandings of the system rather than from official court records which means that no assumptions are made as to the accuracy of case details^[48].

Limitations

There are a number of limitations which are important to consider when reviewing the statistics prepared for this reporting requirement. These are set out below:

• Whilst the statistical data presented here will form an important part of the broader evidence base used to understand the effectiveness of the Act, neither of the years which the data covers (2019-20 and 2020-21) are considered to be fully representative of its use. Statistics from future years will be required to provide an understanding of how the Act has impacted on how domestic abuses cases are prosecuted in court.
• Although the Act came into effect at the start of 2019-20, the full course of conduct for charges under the domestic abuse offence needed to have taken place on or after 1 April 2019 for the charge to apply. Therefore there will have been a time lag before such crimes could be reported to the police and subsequently prosecuted in court, so 2019-20 does not effectively cover a full year under the Act.
• A key limitation is the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the justice system. Whilst it is not yet possible to isolate the impact of the pandemic on the data, it is reasonable to conclude that the 2020-21 data is predominantly a reflection of this, and should not be interpreted as indicative of longer-term trends.

There are also a number of limitations specific to the research on victim and witness experiences:

• As per above, it is not possible to determine the extent to which the pandemic and its impact on the justice system affected the experiences of victims. The pandemic may also have affected the availability and willingness of victims and support services to engage with and/or participate in the research which may have further limited the number and/or diversity of research participants.
• In total, 69 individuals (men, women and children and young people) participated in the research on victim and witness experiences. This represents a very small number of victims that report domestic abuse to the police^[49]. The research reports suggest that small sample sizes were due to a combination of factors including the research design and methodology, eligibility criteria, ethical considerations and procedural delays. As noted in Chapter 3, small sample sizes are fairly typical of this type of research – due largely because of the sensitivities involved when conducting research with victims and witnesses of domestic abuse.
• Whilst the research provides strong qualitative evidence about the lived experience of victims and witnesses, it is not drawn from a representative sample of victims in Scotland, particularly in relation to male victim experiences of court, ethnic minorities and the experience of children impacted by domestic abuse court cases. This means that the findings cannot be generalised, particularly to those groups.
• Due to small sample sizes, the research findings are limited in some areas, in particular, victim experiences of the new DASA Section 1 offence^[50], experiences of specialist courts^[51], and, for the survey research, experiences of court and analysis of associations in the data e.g. by court type, victim characteristics etc.
• As is often the case with sensitive research of this nature, research participants were self-selecting and accessed via support organisations. This was done to ensure participants' safety and wellbeing and to maximise response rate. However, this can also introduce 'bias' into the research^[52]. The methodology aimed to address this via the distribution of the online surveys by COPFS. However, it is possible that some bias remains.

Despite these limitations the research findings highlight some pertinent issues regarding victim and witness experiences of court and the criminal justice system more generally since the implementation of the Act. These are described in Chapters 5-8.