Tackling Male Violence Against Women and Girls
Hampshire Constabulary is committed to tackling violence against women and girls perpetrated by men. Violence, intimidation and harassment of any kind towards women and girls is not acceptable in any form.
Every day, we know that women and girls experience incidents at school, at work, on public transport, in open spaces, on the street, and at home.
Many of these incidents go unreported. Many women feel that sexual harassment and violence is almost an inevitable part of being a woman.
We know that far more needs to be done to tackle this. The National Police Chief’s Council has developed a framework for all UK police forces to ensure that tackling violence against women and girls is a priority.
It is our priority and we are doing something about it.
Whilst we have always prioritised violent crimes against women and girls, we are working towards doing more. Not only must we increase our capability to ensure violent men are pursued, we must also work to increase feelings of safety.
We are:
• Relentlessly pursuing perpetrators who commit violence against women and girls
• Identifying and protecting those who need our help
• Building effective relationships with our support services, local charities and private sector agencies
• Listening to victim’s and women’s groups to learn and improve. Women’s voices are a key factor in helping us shape our action plans. If you’re interested in helping us, please do get in contact by going to the IAG information page.
• Providing the highest level of specialist training and support to our officers and staff to enable us to provide the best service
• Upholding the highest standards of behaviour within our own organisation
What does this mean?
• It means we are policing streets differently, in our cities, we are proactively patrolling to spot men displaying predatory behaviour. We are specifically doing this near pubs and clubs on the weekends and working with security and bar staff to spot those who need our help, and intervene when something doesn’t look right. We’re arresting, we’re issuing Community Protection Order and we’re issuing dispersal orders. We’re also tackling drink and needle spiking. We're also collating data from the StreetSafe tool, which allows people to anonymously report where they have felt unsafe to help us understand how we can improve feelings of safety in particular areas, whether that's behavioural or environmental issues.
• It means we are going after the most high risk perpetrators of domestic violence who continue to commit abuse again and again, and offering additional support for victims. We are making more visits to those who need our help and encouraging them to access support. At the same time, we are visiting the abusers more in order to encourage them to address their offending behaviour. We are disrupting. The majority of the abusers are men, which is why this is so important in tackling violence against women and girls.
• We are increasing our use of Domestic Violence Protection Notice Orders to protect women from further harm when we cannot bring a charge, or when the victim doesn’t support a prosecution.
• We are increasing our use of Stalking Protection Orders.
• We are listening to victims more and more about their experience with reporting and the criminal justice system in order to improve victim experience and build trust.
• We are working closer and closer with the Crown Prosecution Service to provide quality investigations to get rape and serious sexual offences to court, and challenging the long-standing societal myths that surround these crimes.
• We are actively ensuring our officers and staff know how to report discriminatory or unethical behaviours via our internal reporting systems, and we are telling the public when an officer has breached the standards expected or committed a criminal offence, and what action we have taken.
Our role as the police is an important one, but we must remember that any culture change requires a cross sector, multi-agency approach to really make a change.
The Government launched a campaign called ‘Enough’ which is aimed at everyone to help reduce violence against women and girls in society. We can all do our bit to keep women and girls safe by recognising behaviour and calling it out.
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If you want to find out about the support services we offer, go to our advice pages.
We’re here to help.
Domestic violence
Stalking and harassment
Rape and sexual assault
Sex worker safety
Forced marriage
If you think you’ve been a victim of crime and need our help, always call us on 101, or 999 if it’s an emergency.
Alternatively, you can report online.