There is growing international interest in translating Stark’s concept of coercive control into criminal justice policy and practice. In December 2015 an offence of coercive control was introduced in England and Wales. This paper offers an empirical investigation of the problems and possibilities associated with the translation of this offence into practice in one police force area in England. The findings offer some scope for optimism in response to patterns of abuse, but they also support the view that the current gender-neutral version of the legislation requires revision; there is a need for greater resourcing and training to improve understandings of the nature and impact of coercive control at all points of contact within the criminal justice process and finally, it remains the case that effective responses to domestic abuse need to be genuinely holistic.

Academics are increasingly expected to use social media to disseminate their work and knowledge to public audiences. Although this has various advantages, particularly for alternative forms of dissemination, the web can also be an unsafe space for typically oppressed or subordinated groups. This article presents two auto-ethnographic accounts of the abuse and hate academics researching oppressed groups, namely, women and people of Muslim faith, experienced online. In doing so, this article falls into four parts. The first section provides an overview of existing literature, particularly focusing on work which explores the violence and abuse of women and people of Muslim faith online. The second section considers the autoethnographic methodological approach adopted in this article. The third section provides the auto-ethnographic accounts of the author's experiences of hate and abuse online. The final section locates these experiences within broader theoretical concepts, such as silencing, and considers possible implications of such online hate in both an academic context and beyond.

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In December 2015, the criminal offence of coercive control was introduced in England and Wales. Whilst, in this legislation, this concept is presumed to be gender-neutral, there is widespread agreement that coercive control is gendered. Using empirical data gathered in one police force area in the South of England, this paper offers an exploration of the feasibility of the extent to which existing risk assessment practices and understandings of risk embedded within them, can incorporate the phenomenon of coercive control. The findings highlight concerns about gender-blind, incident-led (rather than process-led) approaches to assessing risk when these approaches are set against victim/survivor concerns. These concerns highlight the inherent problems embedded in the contemporary gender-blind embrace of the concept of risk as assumed in practices of risk assessment.

This paper offers a critical appreciation of pro-arrest-positive policing policies towards intimate partner violence (IPV). It examines the extent to which such policies, and the research associated with them, have operated within a partial understanding of discretion, which has paid detailed attention to the response of the front-line officer and how that response might be changed either by improved training and/or by rule tightening. Such approaches assume that policing IPV is separate and separable from policing other forms of violence(s) and fail to recognize the wider context of the policing task. This paper makes the case for a more holistic understanding of discretion (to include senior officers) as a way of promoting improved responses to IPV. This also means directing attention to policies and practices in relation to IPV to include police engagement with broader agency and societal responses to IPV. This is the point at which a holistic ‘golden thread’ of discretion can be found.