DOMESTIC ABUSE FROM COERCIVE CONTROL PROTECTION
Dr Jane Monckton Smith breaks down the myths about coercive control, so officers can better understand it and recognise it
Spotting coercive control can be incredibly difficult for officers. Cameras in every room of the house, for instance, are an obvious sign, but restrictions on when the internet can be used, for example, are impossible to know about unless revealed by the victim. Since it became an offence in 2015, charge and prosecution rates for coercive control remain low. Alongside that, shockingly, almost one in five people in the UK have experienced domestic abuse at some point in their lives. In the past year alone, 1.7 million women and 699,000 men were victims. Research shows the considerable impact coercive control has on victims. It will often precede physical violence and should be considered a warning sign that violence could start in a relationship. Professor of Public Protection at the
University of Gloucestershire and former police officer, Dr Jane Monckton Smith, is featured in this month’s College of Policing’s Inside Policing podcast. She speaks passionately about the importance of response teams being able to spot coercive control. “It’s said all the time that coercive control is really complex, and sometimes it’s hidden, and you can’t find it. So, this makes it impossible for us. All of those things are true. However, it is quite easy to understand coercive control,” she says. “I try to explain it a lot of the time using just one sentence. Rather than try and bombard with all the complexities. Let’s just pull out a one-sentence explanation that a police officer, in a chaotic situation, can draw from.
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“The best one I ever heard was ‘coercive control is a pattern of behaviour designed to trap someone in a relationship’. That’s it, one sentence. That’s what this person is trying to do. That’s their motivation.” In her book, Dangerous Relationships and How They End in Murder, Monckton Smith is clear that “crimes of passion” are a myth and “killers do not snap and lose control”, but rather they kill as part of clear
consequences. Homicide is one of the consequences, but so can being in a sulk, slapping someone or strangling someone. They’re all consequences.”
“Coercive control is a pattern of behaviour designed to trap someone in a relationship”
patterns of coercive control. “Coercive control is a repeating and constant pattern. So during that relationship we have what’s called the three Cs. Control, challenge, consequence. Over and over again,” she tells the podcast. “So, the control is in place through whatever tactics they use to impose control. The victim will challenge that control, maybe inadvertently, but the control is usually a set of unwritten rules. As soon as there’s a challenge, there are
Discussing how officers can spot the signs, she says: “Let’s have a look at why we’ve been called. Clearly there was a challenge and we’ve been called because the consequences became visible to somebody else. We’ve got to manage that situation. You can let the victim know that the consequences could get worse, they may well know that already, and you can manage the consequences that are in front of you, and manage the consequences of what
might happen in the future because you were there.”
• The full interview with Jane Monckton Smith is this month’s Inside Policing
advice and guidance on dealing with coercive control. To download the toolkit, go to
www.college.police.uk/ guidance/violence-against-women- and-girls-toolkit
podcast and is available on all platforms.
• The College of Policing’s violence against women and girls toolkit features
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