Prevention of Violence Against Women and Girls

Plaid Cymru recognises the scale and challenges of violence against women and girls and the need to prevent and reduce the harm that this causes.

There are great challenges in the criminal justice system to ensure that women and girls are believed, and that they get justice for crimes committed against them.

There is a need for specialist training and support officers around the issues of coercive control, stalking and an improved understanding of homicide risk.

We will work with Police and Crime Commissioners in Wales to further develop this support for women and girls.

The number of convictions for crimes against women and girls is very small. The Victims Commissioner could help increase the number of successful convictions of perpetrators, as part of a series of measures.

These include:

• Create a Domestic Abuse Register to protect women is a means of preventing death and injury because it enables the early identification of abusive men. This would shift the responsibility away from the potential victims (as happens under Clare’s Law) and on to the authorities and the offender themselves.
• Stop abusers further harassing their victims through court proceedings and strengthen restraining orders and sanctions for breaching them.
• Following the recommendation of the Suzy Lamplugh Trust that there are specialist stalking training requirements for all professionals dealing with stalking cases, and a unified recording system to be used by the Police, the CPS, the Home Office, Ministry of Justice and National Probation Service to follow the journey of a victim of stalking through the criminal justice system.
• Ensure that laws relating to sexual images are always based on consent rather than intent - to close loopholes that see perpetrators get away with abuse, and
• Increasing sentences for domestic violence and stalking offences.