Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018: interim reporting requirement

Footnotes

1. For example, the time-lag in cases coming to court following an offence means the figures for 2019-20 do not cover a full year. Similarly, 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.

2. Partner abuse in the SCJS is defined as 'any form of physical, non-physical or sexual abuse, which takes place within the context of a close relationship, committed either in the home or elsewhere. This relationship will be between partners (married, co-habiting or otherwise) or ex-partners'. This definition is consistent with the definition adopted by Police Scotland in recording domestic violence. More information is available at Scottish Crime and Justice Survey 2019/20: main findings.

3. See Crime and justice statistics: domestic abuse - data sources and suitability

4. The definition of domestic abuse used by Police Scotland, is not restricted to behaviour where criminal conduct has been identified and recorded. Police Scotland use the interim Vulnerable Persons Database (iVPD) to collate disparate pieces of information about incidents into a single file, allowing officers to build a narrative about people who have reported or been involved in an incident with a domestic abuse element. Some of these incidents will amount to criminal conduct, whereas others will not.

5. Evidence on a 'pro-contact' culture in family courts and associated safety risks to victims and children is documented elsewhere e.g. Morrison, 2015; Hester & Radford, 1996; Brooks-Hay et al., 2019.

6. Although domestic abuse cases represented over a quarter of victims in the CPS population, an opt-in approach was adopted for this group that meant a very low response rate was achieved.

7. See p62 for a summary of the findings related to victims of domestic abuse. Factors covered include access to support services, experiences of reporting and giving evidence, and satisfaction with communications and treatment by justice professionals.

8. See Scotland in Lockdown website.

9. The second COVID-19 lockdown started in Scotland on 5 January 2021 and ended on 2 April 2021; therefore a very small proportion (1.2% or 810 incidents) of the 2021-22 incidents occurred during this time.

10. These findings were also echoed in other research examining support provision to victims of domestic abuse (Pederson & Miller, 2021) and in research on children's human rights in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic (Morrison & Houghton, 2022)

11. The research involved interviews with victims of domestic abuse (n=11), plus interviews (n=18) and surveys (n=22) with support service providers in Scotland.

12. Further information on counting definitions for Criminal Proceedings statistics can be found online: Criminal proceedings in Scotland 2020-2021

13. For example, by allowing research participants to focus on what was important to them and to cover only those aspects that they were comfortable discussing.

14. The women's survey included five cases that had gone to trial; the men's survey included 3 cases (against their partner/ex-partner) and 4 cases (against them) that were referred to court (unclear how many of these had gone to trial); the qualitative research included 22 cases of which all had been referred to court and concluded.

15. It is not clear whether this is because the delays in their cases were unrelated to the pandemic, or they were unaware that the pandemic was a part of the reason for the delays, or simply that they did not refer to the pandemic when discussing with researchers.

16. Special measures are provisions designed to help vulnerable witnesses to give their best evidence in court and to reduce stress associated with giving evidence. They include things like using a screen in court, using a web link in another location to give evidence, having an in-court supporter, and evidence by commissioner (where the witness gives their evidence before the court case has started).

17. In the qualitative research, all nine adults and two children who gave evidence used one or more special measure when giving evidence.

18. In Scotland there is no plea bargaining as such (a term usually used to describe bargaining between the accused and the judge), but plea negotiation. Prosecutors will consider any offer to plead guilty to lesser or amended charges. When considering whether or not to accept pleas of guilty or not guilty in relation to various different charges against an accused, the Crown will consider, among other factors, the distress and inconvenience a trial may cause to the victim and other witnesses and the available evidence against the accused. Only when the prosecutor considers it to be in the public interest will a plea of guilty to lesser or amended charges be accepted.

19. The qualitative research included in-depth interviews with five court cited child witnesses (age 12-17). This included 3 boys and 2 girls.

20. Information about five other child cited witnesses was also included in the qualitative study through their mother's perspectives when interviewed.

21. E.g. Houghton, C. & MacDonald, R. (2019) Everyday Heroes: Justice Report

22. Four female young victim complainers (age 17-22 but who were under 18 when first subject to domestic abuse) were interviewed in the qualitative research study.

23. The men and women's surveys had too few responses to questions about DASA provisions (e.g. NHOs) to report on.

24. 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. If the majority of the alleged abuse occurred before 1 April 2019, it would have been difficult to use the new offence to prosecute it.

25. In the qualitative research study, 1 DASA case involved a s5 aggravation in relation to a child (child aggravator). As noted in Chapter 4, The Scottish Government Criminal Proceedings Bulletin figures 2020/21 indicate that, of 381 convictions under DASA, 90 had a child aggravation proven which represents nearly a quarter of convictions.

Across the sample of 22 cases in the qualitative research, 15 out of 18 guilty plea/verdict cases had a NHO granted, 3 of which included a child. The cases involved 10 child cited witnesses overall.

26. See Domestic Abuse and Child Contact: The Interface Between Criminal and Civil Proceedings for more information

27. These included being in control of their lives and their and their children's safety.

28. 13 people answered this question 'Reflecting on your general experience of the Scottish Criminal Justice System to date, if you had known what it would be like, would you have chosen to become involved with the process?' (p 36)

29. VIA – Victim Information and Advice service provided by COPFS

30. To note that the report states that the numbers must be interpreted with caution as each of the points of action did not apply to every individual and given the sample size it is not feasible to run statistical tests against these findings (p23).

31. Response rate is higher than the number of survey respondents (n=29) as this finding is based on responses to more than one question.

32. 9 out of 12 respondents whose cases were referred to court said they felt safe at this stage. Equivalent data for court and post-court stages were not reported on.

33. This included 3 boys, 2 girls and 4 female young complainers.

34. 3 NHOs were applied to children in the study sample.

35. See Domestic Abuse and Child Contact: The Interface Between Criminal and Civil Proceedings for more information.

36. The Act provides the court with a power to make a NHO to protect the victim and any children under the age of 18 either living with the victim or perpetrator or in respect of whom the child aggravation has been proven. However the court does not have a power to make provision in an NHO to protect other persons.

37. Data tables for this question were not included in the Women's Survey Report. However, the report states on p26 that two women (out of 29) had false allegations made against them by the perpetrator.

38. 13 out of 18 respondents said that no further action was taken against the perpetrator after reporting to the police / after the Prosecutor Fiscal assessed the case.

39. Data comparisons are difficult due to different questions being covered in the reports and missing data and small sample sizes.

40. Women with lived experience of domestic abuse and sexual assaults.

41. Disability data was not provided in the women's survey report or the qualitative research.

42. The majority of respondents in the men's survey reported that they were heterosexual (n=15), with three indicating that that they were homosexual (n=2) or bi-sexual (n=1).

43. Using the principles of the Victims and Witnesses (Scotland) Act 2014 (S1 and 1A) outlined in Chapter 1 of the Victim's Code for Scotland.

44. Trauma Informed Justice: A Knowledge and Skills Framework for Working with Victims and Witnesses

45. An 'intermediate diet' is a hearing to ascertain, insofar as possible, whether both Crown and defence are ready to proceed to the trial. It is designed to avoid trials having to be adjourned at the last minute because of issues that could reasonably have been dealt with in court prior to the trial.

46. The SCCJR's Measuring Justice Briefing suggests that it is important to consider how victims experience different stages of the justice system and to consider measuring procedural, effective, distributive and therapeutic justice – all factors associated with victim satisfaction.

47. E.g. by allowing victims in the research to focus on the aspect of the justice system they felt was most important and that they were comfortable with discussing.

49. In 2021-22 just under 65,000 incidents of domestic abuse were recorded. The latest Recorded Crime National Statistics show that there were 1,760 crimes recorded under the Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018 in 2021-22. This was a 7% increase compared to 2020-21 (from 1,641 to 1,760) and a 5% increase compared to 2019-20 (from 1,681 to 1,760).

50. It was not possible in the research to identify which cases related to DASA Section 1 offences, with the exception of the qualitative research which included 12 cases. The research found that in many cases, research participants did not know what the specific charge was and/or had limited understanding of the new legislation.

51. Victims and witness might not know whether a court is a specialist court; for ethical (data protection) reasons it was not felt appropriate to ask survey respondents which court their case took place in. The sample size was too low to do any meaningful analysis by local authority area.

52. For example, it may be mean that participants with an 'extreme' experience (very good or very bad) may be more likely to take part in research. It also means that victims who are not engaged with a support service are less likely to take part.

53. Data for years 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 is provided in this report. Data for 2021-22, the third year of the reporting requirement, is not currently available and will be published in 2023.

54. Whilst most of the data presented is qualitative, the research also includes some simple (descriptive) quantitative data from the two surveys.