Violence against women and girls needs to be policed like terrorism, Labour shadow minister Jess Phillips says

Violence against women and girls is a “form of terrorism in our communities” and needs to be policed as such, Jess Phillips has said.

Phillips, the Shadow Minister for Domestic Violence and Safeguarding, said there needs to be a rigorous “database focused” approach on repeat offenders, who perpetrate 90% of the annual crimes against women.

Labour has made one of its five missions to halve violence against women and girls within 10 years, which the MP for Birmingham Yardley said this “fills me with great hope”. 

Speaking at an event at the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool, Phillips explained: “This is a tanker that’s going to take a huge amount of turning, but for the first time, I say this with genuine pride, I feel like we have a chance to elect a government who does put this front and centre.”

Between 16% and 20% of total crimes are made up of violence against women and girls, the event heard. Yet as Phillips said “Rishi Sunak didn’t mention it in his hour long speech”. 

“This isn’t on his mind, he’s never going to stand on a podium that says ‘stop violence’,” she continued. “This is one of the Labour Party’s five missions that it takes into the election and it is bold and it is ambitious. It’s measurable - we’ll be held accountable for that. That fills me with great hope that that is the situation we’ll go into the next election with.”

Phillips told the audience - as attended by NationalWorld which was standing room only - that police need to copy the tactics of counter terror officers, and target repeat offenders. She said: “We have got to use what has been used in terrorism in the past and move it over to this particular environment. That’s absolutely what will be done. 

“We have to ruthlessly target repeat offending. If somebody offended once … and that person never repeated that violence, you wouldn’t just halve domestic abuse and sexual violence in the first year - you would cut by 90%. Repeat incidences are able to happen because the state has failed to intervene. This isn’t just a criminal justice response.”

The shadow minister highlighted how London’s Metropolitan Police has launched a scheme where detectives focus in on the 100 worst offenders for violence against women and girls every week.

She said: “The Met Police have adopted a model of data gathering about the 100 worst offenders each week as if they were terrorists. It’s using the same form of policing as we have for terrorism, so looking at risk registers and prevention interruption.”

This V100 programme generated an average of four new violence against women and girls crime allegations each, in the preceding year. Over two-thirds of these offences were flagged as “domestic incidents”, and 61% of suspects were named for attacking two or more victims.

Phillips added: “We need that argument that it’s a form of terrorism in our communities, and it’s sexy policing. One of the problems that we have faced with the epidemic of violence by men against women is that within forces it’s not holding a gun, it’s not the sexy thing you need a professional qualification to do.”

Labour says it will roll out this kind of scheme across the country, covering the 1,000 most dangerous abusers and sex offenders against women. 

Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper commented: “Violence against women and girls is endemic in our society and under the Conservatives it has remained shamefully and persistently high. Enough is enough.  

“Under Labour, the police will be asked to relentlessly pursue the perpetrators who pose the greatest risk to women, and use all the tools at their disposal to protect victims and get dangerous offenders off the streets. The police should be exhausting every opportunity for enforcement, prevention and protection - too often failure to do so has had devastating and fatal consequences.  

“For far too long, dangerous criminals have been let off and victims have been let down. Labour will be unrelenting in its mission to halve incidents of violence against women and girls in a decade”. 

Fellow panellist Andrew Fahey, director at Forensic Analytics, a company which helps police use technology to catch criminals, highlighted a pilot scheme in east London, which focuses on targeting offenders through digital policing.

Officers reassessed domestic abuse cases that had been closed by analysing the digital evidence, and in each case they had a charge within 24 hours. “They need to make it a digitally first process,” Fahey added.