Violence against women, girls at ‘epidemic’ levels: UK police

Such violence accounted for 20 percent of all reported crime in England and Wales from 2022 to 2023, report says.

Women and girls in the United Kingdom are suffering “epidemic” levels of violent crime, police warn, with a new report documenting more than 1 million such offences within a year.

The report, released on Tuesday by the UK’s National Police Chiefs’ Council and the College of Policing, found that violence against women and girls made up about 20 percent of all reported crime in England and Wales from 2022 to 2023.

It said one in every six murders in England and Wales during the period was related to domestic abuse.

Based on the data, at least one in every 12 women will be a victim each year of gender-based violent crimes, including rape, stalking, harassment and online sexual abuse, according to the report.

The number is likely to be higher due to unreported crimes, Deputy Chief Constable Maggie Blyth said.

‘National emergency’

Blyth said the data were “staggering” and growing in scale and complexity every year with violent crimes targeting girls and women increasing 37 percent from 2018 to 2022.

Child sexual abuse and exploitation jumped by 435 percent from 2013 to 2022, the report estimated – from incidents climbing from just over 20,000 to nearly 107,000.

“Violence against women and girls is a national emergency,” Blyth said in a statement. “We need to move forward as a society to make change and no longer accept violence against women and girls as inevitable.”

Britain’s government last year classified violence against women and girls as a national threat to public safety, and police forces were told to prioritise their response to the issue in the same way as they do “terrorism” and organised crime.

The report said thousands of police officers were newly trained to investigate rape and other sexual offences in the past year.

But the scale of the violence is so enormous that law enforcement alone cannot address it, the report said. One in 20 people are estimated to be perpetrators of violence against women and girls per year, with the actual number thought to be significantly higher.

The report cited early data showing a 25 percent increase in the number of arrests from 2019 to 2022.

But Blyth said this response was not enough and called for more government support to tackle a criminal justice system that is “overwhelmed and under-performing for victims”.

“Our focus will always be to bring the men behind these pervasive crimes to justice,” she said. “By enhancing the way we use data and intelligence, we will improve our ability to identify, intercept and arrest those causing the most harm in communities.”