The Effectiveness of Domestic Abuse Disclosure Schemes

Using criminal histories to empower victim–survivors of domestic abuse

“…The kinds of micro-gains in awareness or informed choice just described – planting a seed, providing a piece in a puzzle, casting doubt and confirming suspicions – suggest that police see the value of early-stage disclosures as important in terms of ‘changing [a person’s] view on a relationship’ (P42) but modest in terms of safety. This contrasts significantly with the policy rhetoric around the DVDS, which consistently promotes disclosure as a means of preventing victimisation altogether by revealing risk that was entirely unsuspected and therefore prompting people to escape a relationship before it becomes abusive (Grace, 2021: 100). That rhetoric was explicitly contested by one male Sargent when he said: ‘It’s very rare that someone says “oh my god I didn’t know that” and walks away’ [from their partner] (P51).…”

“…For example, in his evaluation of the New South Wales disclosure scheme, Urbis (2020) found no evidence that reported victimisation reduces following a disclosure, and therefore concludes that disclosure schemes are therefore failing to achieve their aims. In his UK study, Grace (2021) did find some evidence (though not sufficient to be generalisable) that victimisation was less likely to be reported after disclosure in some forces, and took this as an indication that disclosures might be effective in some cases. Both of these studies conceptualise effectiveness purely in terms of safety.…”

“…To do so is, she argues, self-defeating, because it does not respond to survivors’ needs as they define them and therefore fails to promote genuine self-determination. More recently, Grace has questioned the value to victim-survivors of a scheme that seems to aim primarily ‘to try to make them more “rational” about their partners’ (2021: 49) rather than to induce their partners to stop being abusive.…”

“…Such a methodology would also resist current efforts to reduce effectiveness to narrow interpretations of ‘safety’ such as ‘reduced incidence’ of domestic abuse or violence (Grace, 2021; Greene and O’Leary, 2018). It would also provide grounds for questioning assertions that the lack of evidence of reductions in incidents of violence is alone sufficient to demonstrate a lack of effectiveness in disclosure schemes (QLRC, 2017; Urbis, 2020).…”

“…But feminist scholars have expressed scepticism, pointing out that ‘crude translations of the principle that knowledge is power’ are frequently invoked in support of questionable neoliberal political strategies that shift responsibility for the prevention of crime from the state to individuals (Coy and Kelly, 2011: 160; see also Wangmann, 2017; Fitz-Gibbon and Walklate, 2017). Are empowerment and informed choice merely ‘mantras’ (Grace, 2021: 50) deployed unreflectively or even cynically to deflect responsibility for the rising rates of domestic abuse from police onto victims themselves, and are disclosure schemes merely a convenient vehicle to do this (Greene and O’Leary, 2018)? Or is there a meaningful sense in which police seek to promote empowerment through the disclosure of criminal history information?…”