Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls [VAWG] has been a key objective of mine since I took office.
The term VAWG covers a wide range of unacceptable behaviour that ranges from rape to domestic abuse and muggings. Dealing with these crimes is not always straightforward and can involve a wide range of services to support victims and witnesses, as well as deploying the police to deal with perpetrators.
It is for that reason that I have been allocating grants and commissioning services from a wide range of charities, community groups and other bodies. The maps above show where these are located. They include Living Without Abuse, and New Dawn New Day, as well as preventative services such as Freeva.
In March 2023 I held a VAWG day, bringing together a number of stakeholders in LLR to discuss shared issues among the city and county, and how we can support each other to assist the overall VAWG strategy. I also support “Operation Empower” which is a University of Leicester run operation to streamline the approach to VAWG between regional forces. This has been attended numerous times by members of my office, including the Deputy PCC, Rani Mahal.
I have also funded the work of You’re Right, That’s Wrong, a campaign for calling out derogatory or harassing behaviour of men towards women. I and my office are also working closely with the Violence Reduction Network, which I fund. That organisation is currently following government guidance to re-evaluate definitions for serious violence.
The overall figures for VAWG crimes has been drastically affected by the Covid Lockdowns. Some crimes shot up as vulnerable women were effectively confined with their abusers. Others went into decline as women were no longer vulnerable to sexual harassment in pubs and bars.
Overall figures for the year to March 2020 there were 11,811 VAWG offences across Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland. That went up to 17,280 in the year to March 2021 – a rise of 63% in the final year of a Labour PCC. The figure rose by 12% in my first year in office to 20,382 and in my second year in office it has fallen to 19,348 [a drop of 5%] as we begin to get to grips with the problem.
Much more needs to be done, but at last we are moving in the right direction.
Another figure that is improving is the positive outcome of investigations by the Leicestershire Police. In 2019 this was 8.7% for VAWG crimes. The same figure is now 10.2% for the first months of 2023.
Increases in figures for rape were seen in 2021 onwards, but have decreased in the past year and remained stable recently and are forecast to remain unchanged for the next few months.
The official figures for stalking and harassment showed sharp increases in 2020-2021. This was due to well known changes in recording practices and increase in confidence in reporting. There has been an expansion of the dedicated decision maker team in Leicestershire Police, as well as an increase in training officers on stalking and harassment offences. The figures have now stabilised and are forecast to remain stable.
Any crime of violence against a woman or girl is unacceptable and we all want to see the figures going down. However, I am confident that we are now on the right track. After massive variations during and after the Covid Lockdowns the number of reports is stabilising and positive outcomes to investigations are increasing. Combined with the support for victims of VAWG that I am funding I can say that things have stabilised and are now improving – though the trauma of suffering violence cannot be overstated for the individual women and girls who suffer in this way.
