When Louise* received a letter from the police regarding their investigation into her abuse at the hands of a long-term partner, it was not the outcome she was hoping for.
The letter said there was not enough evidence to take further action, and her case was closed.
“I was devastated,” she told Sky News, “I felt let down by the police force. I was not expecting to hear that, especially with all the evidence they had from myself and statements from witnesses and my doctor.”
Following years of physical, mental, sexual, and emotional abuse, Louise took the difficult decision to seek criminal justice for her own safety and that of her children.
“He always threatened that if I ever spoke out about the abuse, that he would kill me. So, I always had that in the back of my mind,” she said.
“It was a very vulnerable, dangerous time. They did put a non-molestation court order in place, but he was breaching it,” she explained, “leaving notes at my door and going to my son’s nursery daily.”
Louise. Pic: Sky News
When Louise phoned the police to report his breaches of the no-contact order, she felt that call handlers “weren’t taking it seriously”.
It was his way of demonstrating to her that he was “above the law”, because the police wouldn’t intervene, she said.
“I feel alone, vulnerable and scared now, because I’ve spoken out and gone against my ex-partner, but he’s obviously gotten away with it.”
It does not mean that evidence is not present
Louise’s experience, where an investigation is closed despite the victim wishing to pursue action, is now shared by more than one in four domestic abuse victims, according to exclusive data collected by Sky News via Freedom of Information requests sent to all police forces in England and Wales.
Our investigation found it is far more common for domestic abuse cases to end this way despite victim support for prosecution than in other types of crime – and it is rising.
Such cases have increased from 23% of outcomes in 2019 to 27% in 2023, among the 29 forces that responded to the request.
This is known as a Type 15 outcome, defined as when a crime is confirmed and the victim supports police action, but evidential difficulties prevent further action.
It includes cases where the suspect has been circulated as wanted but cannot be traced.
It is more likely that there will be a named suspect in domestic abuse flagged offences, because for the domestic nature of the crime to be recognised the relationship between suspect and victim must have already been established.
In response to these findings, Amy Bowdrey, policy and public affairs officer at domestic abuse support charity Refuge, told Sky News: “It speaks to what we as an organisation hear from survivors all the time.
“Often at Refuge, we will encourage survivors to keep a paper trail of evidence. To know that in a large proportion of those cases that evidence is there, but the police just aren’t taking it seriously, is really, really concerning for us.”
Detective Inspector Adam Gascoigne, from Derbyshire Constabulary’s high risk domestic abuse unit, said: “The threshold that needs to be met to get cases to court is extremely high and there must be a realistic prospect of conviction for the matter to proceed.
“Unfortunately, in some cases the evidence simply isn’t there to secure that, so the difficult decision has to be made that a matter is closed outcome 15, which means it does not proceed to court.
“This decision can either be made by the police force investigating or the Crown Prosecution Service.
“This does not mean that evidence is not present, but that the standard of evidence available does not necessarily meet the very high threshold needed to proceed to court in the hopes of securing a conviction.”
Complex cases
Twenty-two police forces provided more detailed breakdowns of domestic abuse investigation outcomes by type of offence.
Their responses show that outcomes are worse in specific types of crime, particularly in more complex cases involving coercive control.
Coercive control is a continuous pattern of behaviour intended to exert power or control over a victim and was made a criminal offence in 2015 in England and Wales. This can include a range of behaviours including psychological, emotional, and financial abuse.
Offences classified as stalking and harassment, under which coercive control is included, resulted in Type 15 outcomes in more than a third of cases (34%) in 2023, up from 30% in 2019.
Dr Charlotte Barlow, reader in criminal justice and policing at the University of Central Lancashire researches criminal justice and police responses to domestic abuse.
She says there have been positive developments over time, particularly since the coercive control legislation has come into force, and officer understanding of this form of domestic abuse is “a little bit” better.
“But there are still persistent issues with the frontline response, where there are real moments of evidence gathering opportunity,” she told Sky News.
Domestic abuse is an extremely prevalent crime, and the police record nearly 3,000 calls relating to violence against women and girls each day, according to a recent report by the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) and the College of Policing.
Sixteen percent of all crimes, and one third of violent crimes, investigated between 2019 and 2023 by police in the data collected by Sky News were flagged as domestic abuse.
The first police response is often a pivotal moment for evidence gathering, and an opportunity to gather vital information from the victim and other sources.
Incidents with clear physical evidence of violence, for example, present more straightforward investigative opportunities for responding officers.
In violence with injury investigations, Type 15 outcomes were recorded in 24% of cases, compared to 33% for stalking and harassment, in 2023.
“One of the issues that I found in my work on police responses to coercive control in particular is it might be a number of days after the victim-survivor called before the police are able to visit, when there might not be any physical evidence there anymore,” Dr Barlow said.
“Sometimes the police can then perceive, ‘oh, it’s just one word against the other’. But there are other forms of evidence that could be gathered as well as testimony. For instance, speaking to other friends and family, evidence on phones, or evidence of economic abuse through bank statements.”
“It is more challenging to evidence coercive control,” she acknowledged, “but there are avenues that could be taken that aren’t always taken because of time pressures and resource constraints.”
Increase in recorded offences
West Yorkshire Police, the fourth largest police force in England, told Sky News that they have consistently recorded a higher rate of domestic offences than other police forces in recent years, but that both this, as well as the rise in cases where victims support prosecution, can be viewed as a positive development.
The force said: “This can in part be attributed to the force’s ethical and victim focused crime recording practices, which have been praised by the HMICFRS [police inspectorate], and a growing confidence of victims to report domestic abuse generally. While the number of overall charges for domestic abuse offences did fall following the COVID pandemic it has been increasing in the last two years.”
This is not the case for all police forces, however. Overall, in the data we assessed, the charge rate for domestic abuse investigations fell from 10% to 8%.
The total number of crimes recorded by police has increased in recent years, as has the overall number of crimes charged.
The number of investigations completed in 2023 was 15% higher than in 2019, (after an initial drop during COVID), for non-domestic abuse related cases, and while the number of charges didn’t match this pace of increase, they did rise by 8%.
The number of domestic abuse investigations rose faster and was 23% higher than in 2019. In contrast, however, the number of charges brought in 2023 is slightly lower than the number in 2019, at 43,846, compared to 43,889 (among responding forces).
Ms Bowdrey said that this is in part because “we’re speaking about domestic abuse more, and more people are reporting it.
“But it’s not being matched to an understanding, which I think is leading to these cases not being progressed.
“That’s not just within policing, that’s also within the CPS as well. There’s a lack of joint working between the CPS and the police to make sure that case files are really strong. We’re just not seeing that.”
Both the CPS and the NPCC acknowledge that working practices between police and prosecutors should be improved to increase justice for victims, which is part of the aim of the national Domestic Abuse Joint Justice Plan which is under development.
Staffing and backlogs
These issues can also be understood through the lens of workforce pressures as well as backlogs further along in the criminal justice system.
Recent additions to the police workforce, which has grown by 36,000 for all full-time employees (including staff) since 2019, have nearly restored employee numbers to the level they were before austerity cuts through the 2010s.
But the increase in reported crime has outpaced the growth in workforce.
As a result, the number of crimes recorded per employee in 2024 has increased by nearly 60% since 2010, from 18 to 28 crimes recorded per full-time employee in the police.
Meanwhile, the courts are still suffering from huge caseload backlogs, which were already significant in 2019 but rose rapidly over the pandemic and currently remain on an upward trajectory.
This can also contribute to poor outcomes at court, where 24% of domestic abuse cases fail at trial (compared to 17% of all cases).
Many factors contribute to this, including victim attrition (where victims pull out of supporting the prosecution), which can be exacerbated by long waits for trial.
Police response
National Police Chiefs’ Council Lead for Domestic Abuse, Assistant Commissioner Louisa Rolfe, said: “Tackling domestic abuse is a priority for policing and we are committed to protecting victims, bringing perpetrators to justice and preventing these horrific crimes.
“We have made vast improvements in the way that we respond to domestic abuse… But, we know that there is more to do to support victims and bring more perpetrators to justice.
“We are working closely with the Crown Prosecution Service to improve the successful investigation and prosecution of domestic abuse cases under the Domestic Abuse Joint Justice Plan.
“We want to ensure everyone feels confident reporting to the police and will do everything we can to provide victims with the right support, safeguarding and to secure justice wherever possible.”
CPS response
A Crown Prosecution Service spokesperson said: “We are also transforming the service we provide to victims through our long-term Victim Transformation Programme, which aims to improve victim experiences and help to support prosecutions.
“When a case is referred to us for a charging decision, data shows most will result in a prosecution and conviction – but we recognise the overall number of prosecutions is still too low and we are striving to improve this.”
*Louise’s name has been changed to protect her identity.
If you or someone you know is a victim of domestic abuse, support is available.
Methodology
We sent Freedom of Information requests to the 43 police forces in England and Wales to request recorded crime data from 2015 to 2019 by date of investigation closure, outcome, whether the offence was classified as domestic abuse, and the underlying type of offence.
29 police forces responded to the request with data from at least 2019 onwards, so this has been used as the starting date for comparison. 22 forces provided the requested crime classification breakdown.
Non-crime incidents, fraud offences, and other non-countable offences have been excluded in accordance with Home Office Counting Rules.
The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.