Development of indicators and official statistics of gender-based violence

1
Development of indicators and official statistics
of gender-based violence

• Sylvia Walby
• Lancaster University

2
Introduction

• Focus Indicators and statistics on gender-based
  violence
• Just a sub-set of information needs
• What are the priorities?
• Contributions of academics, government
  statisticians, policy makers, NGOs.

3
National surveys

• Development of large scale national surveys in
  many countries
• Many methodological refinements
• Self-completion, wider range, new scaling
• Interest in developing comparable national
  findings through surveys
• UN, EU, IVAWS
• What priorities? Next steps?

4
Domestic Violence, Sexual Assault and Stalking
Findings from British Crime Survey

• BCS under continual development
• BCS self-completion module, 2001
• 22,463 sample
• Self-completion computer turned to respondent to
  read and respond confidentially
• Included domestic violence, sexual assault and
  stalking
• Questions to both men and women

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BCS Self-completion methodology

• Comparing prevalence rate
• Face-to-face interviewing
• Self completion
• Narrow definition DV (non-sexual, no threats)
• face-to-face interviewing 0.6
• self completion 2.8
• Prevalence five times higher using
  self-completion methodology than face-to-face
  interviewing

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Comparing definitions in BCS self-complete

• DV Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS)
• types of actions (e.g. slapped, kicked, choked)
• frequency of incidents
• Sexual assault and stalking
• DV Injuries
• Whether injured and how seriously
• Whether victim/survivor saw it as DV
• Whether victim/survivor saw it as a crime

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CTS and prevalence findings

• CTS Prevalence (in the last year)
• Domestic abuse, threats or force 5
• Domestic threats or force 4
• Domestic force 3
• Beyond CTS
• Rape or assault by penetration women 0.5
• 54 of rape by intimate (including former)

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Injuries

• Injuries
• Whether women injured in worst incident last
  year
• Some injury 72
• No injury 28
• Minor injury 46
• Moderate injury 20
• Severe injury 6

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Victim/survivors views

• Whether female victim/survivor saw it as DV
• One incident, 56 4 or more times, 95 (last
  year)
• Whether female victim/survivor saw it as a
  crime
• One incident, 24 4 or more, 66 (last year)
• Injury none 15 minor 53 severe 87 (lifetime)

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Why Indicators?

• Simplify and abstract from complex data
• Relevant to policy making and assessment
• Provide a clear focus to measure change
• National Plan Performance indicators Public
  Service Agreements for Comprehensive Spending
  Review
• Enable international comparisons
• Provide a different contribution than complex
  statistics, qualitative data, personal accounts.
• Depend on large population surveys

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Productive tension between specificity and
mainstreaming

• Specific nature of gender-based violence and
  detailed appreciation of distinctive nuances?
• AND/OR
• More general categories that facilitate
  addressing priorities within the mainstream,
  including crime?

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Types of indicators

• Outcome
• The amount of gender based violence
• Policy development and implementation
• Identifying extent to which policy is implemented
  on the ground

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Definitions

• Gender-based violence UN
• Domestic violence HO?
• Violence against women - WNC
• Range of Actions
• domestic violence, sexual violence, stalking,
  FGM, forced marriage, honour crimes,
  trafficking . . .
• Range of Perpetrators
• Partner, domestic non-partner, non-domestic?

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Outcome indicators

• Home Office (2004) DV plan
• Domestic homicide
• Robust, but small proportion of dv
• Prevalence
• Rate of domestic violence in the population
• headcount

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Prevalence Is it the best indicator?

• Advantages
• Uses concept of DV as a course of conduct
• Conventional measure among DV experts
• Disadvantages
• Hard to translate into crime statistics, which
  are based on number of incidents
• Does not contain measure of severity
• Specialised, not mainstream, indicator

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Severity of gender-based violence and crime
statistics

• Frequency/Incidents
• Crimes are counted as incidents
• If dv/gender based violence is to be mainstreamed
  into crime statistics there needs to be an
  incident count
• Injuries
• Violent crime categories are differentiated
  primarily by injury level, though also intent
• To mainstream, injuries need to be known for each
  incident

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Prevalence, incidents and gender

• Use of prevalence rather than incidents reduces
  the appearance of gender inequality in official
  statistics
• Domestic violence prevalence
• 4 women, 2 men
• Average no. incidents of domestic violence
• women 20, men 7
• DV experienced as one incident only
• 28 women, 47 men
• Total incidents DV
• 12.9 million against women, 2.4m men
• Gender ratio prevalence 21
• Gender ratio incidents 51

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Prevalence and incidents

• Prevalence use of course of conduct might mean
  that a series of 20 incidents may count only as
  one crime, thereby underestimating the proportion
  of violent crime that is dv/gender-based violence
• Prevalence single events count, thereby skewing
  the gender composition towards image of symmetry

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Injuries, Acts, and the CTS

• Conflict Tactics Scale uses actions as severity
  measure
• Crime Statistics use predominantly injuries as
  severity measure (though also intention)
• Injuries are more gender asymmetrical than
  actions
• Minor force (e.g. slap) 49 women 36 men
  sustain physical injury
• Severe force (e.g. choke, weapon) 77 women 56
  men sustain physical injury
• CTS suggests lesser gender inequality than crime
  categories
• CTS does not usually include sexual assault

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Crime categories for indicators?

• Crime categories
• Use incidents to measure extent
• Use (primarily) injuries to measure severity
• Advantages
• Mainstreams
• Show gender dimensions of DV more effectively
  than CTS and prevalence

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Data needs?

• Prevalence
• AND Crime based definitions of incidents, using
  injuries not acts
• DV to include full range of actions, including
  domestic sexual assaults
• Gender-based violence category to include DV,
  non-domestic sexual assaults, FGM, honour crimes

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Implications for British Crime Survey

• Self-completion important innovation
• Both prevalence and incidents
• Collect data additionally within crime categories
  
• Name wider range of forms of gender based
  violence e.g. FGM
• Collect data on each incident (not worst or last)
• Injury (and intent)
• Victim forms to be completed on each incident
• Increase maximum no. forms for each respondent
• Findings to be integrated into crime count
• Number of BCS violent crimes will rise
• DV will appear as a higher of BCS violent crime

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Policy Performance

• Ministries and agencies have roles in reduction
  of gender-based violence
• Criminal justice system
• Health
• Local authorities
• Housing and refuges
• Social services
• Civil legal services
• Few have the evidence to assess their
  performance, rarely knowing how much their
  services are used for DV
• Reviewed in Cost of Domestic Violence

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Service indicators

• What do we need to know?
• What outcome and policy indicators?
• Local authorities
• New best value indicator includes DV

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Health developments in recording/measuring

• Screening and diagnostic codes
• Screening dilemmas
• Screen when referrals not ready?
• BCS
• Asked cause of injuries 94
• Disclosed cause of injuries 74
• Referred to anyone else 26
• Diagnostic code for DV
• Primary not secondary code under development
• E.g. primary DV secondary broken wrist

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Criminal Justice System (CJS) recorded crimes,
criminal statistics

• Policy change in CJS and its implications
• Attrition rate for rape high and rising (Kelly et
  al)
• Conviction rate for reported rapes, 5.6 in 2002
• Recognised need for DV attrition rate (HO DV
  Nat Plan)
• Rate of reporting to police (compare BCS rate
  with reported crimes)
• Recording of reports by police (recorded crime
  or domestic incident)
• Detection
• Arrest (currently sole performance measure)
• Prosecution
• Completed court case
• Conviction (criminal statistics)

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HO Objectives for reducing attrition of DV in CJS
in National Plan 2004

• Objective 4. Increase the rate at which domestic
  violence is reported . . . to the police . .
• BUT No record of number of recorded crimes by
  police in official statistics for DV
• Objective 5. Increase the rate at which domestic
  violence incidents result in sanction/detections
  . . .
• BUT No record of DV detections/sanctions in
  official statistics
• Objective 6. Increase the rate at which sanction
  detections are converted into offences/offenders
  brought to justice .
• BUT No record of DV criminal convictions in
  criminal statistics

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CJS data requirements

• No recorded crime statistics on domestic
  violence, since not a specific criminal offence
• BUT arrest rates for DV are produced, so there is
  a record of crime by whether domestic but not
  public
• Recommend relevant recorded crimes are
  cross-classified as domestic or not as key aspect
  of recorded crime and criminal statistics
• Met did this in 1999 (cf Health diagnostic codes)
• Otherwise impossible to track DV in CJS
  statistics to evaluate progress on HO objectives

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Conclusions

• Much current development of statistical data and
  proposals for indicators
• Nationally and internationally
• BCS 2001 self-completion produced information on
  implications of different classifications
• BCS further development of outcome indicators
• Mainstream into crime categories, as well as for
  specific needs
• Numbers of incidents and injuries for each, as
  well as prevalence
• Both DV and wider range of gender-based violence
• International standards for EU and global
  comparisons?
• Recorded crime and criminal statistics
• cross-classify violent crimes by domestic
• Further development of public services
  performance indicators