In contemporary society, domestic abuse has been highlighted as one of the most sensitive and consequential forms of abuse and topic in society. This element has resulted in multiple parties in society involving themselves in various efforts that concentrate on this issue. Different parties have also highlighted multiple concerns regarding domestic violence; thus, the participation of different individuals in society has made domestic violence a highly sensitive and engaging topic in contemporary society. This type of participation has influenced different institutions under the government and private sector to eliminate these issues in society actively. Collaboration has been identified as one of the most crucial and much-needed additions to eliminate domestic violence in society. There exist multiple perspectives and evidence that effectively construct domestic violence as one of the most consequential social vices considering the sequential events initiated by this vice. Multiple elements construct domestic violence in the respective society, thus ensuring that different parties implement diverse approaches to eliminating domestic violence. Gender has been identified as one of the most consequential elements that construct domestic violence; hence the need to be conscious of gender factors that are likely to impact any effort to eliminate domestic violence. This factor is characterized by the statics that 75% of victims of domestic violence identified as female hence the need for different shareholders interested in domestic violence to be conscious of this factor. Considering the multiple opportunities that exist for different institutions to play a role in eliminating domestic violence, Victim Support is easily identified as one of the best illustrations of organizations driven by the need to eliminate domestic violence in society. This report is centralized around victim support as an organization and its role in influencing different policies and perspectives of the organization, including conclusions on various hypotheses related to domestic violence.
Victim Support has implemented multiple perspectives as an organization, thus ensuring that they are inclusive of different opinions, arguments, and shareholders who actively participate in eliminating domestic violence. The organization’s perspective on domestic violence is influenced by what is determined by the law, thus ensuring that its interests and objectives are within various legal lines. His element ensures that the organization’s strategy can be implemented nationally and internationally. Victim support provides various services to various victims of domestic violence in England and Wales, thus ensuring that its approach is highly efficient in eliminating the social issues in the respective regions. Victim Support has provided easy access to over 100 IDVAs who make it easier to tap into different populations and regions in Wales and England. The experts involved with the organization are subject to multiple standards, which increase the efficiency and sequential flow of various efforts and strategies implemented by the organization. The organization creates the best environment for reporting and helping the victims of domestic abuse by providing privacy, experts, and key services that previous studies have identified as crucial to eliminating domestic abuse (Alex et al. 2017, 10). Impediment domestic violence advisors provide a highly targeted approach to the victim by ensuring that the victim and their family are the focal points of any decision and strategy implemented by the experts and the organization.
Victim Support is dedicated to providing domestic abuse victims with links to various experts who have extensive knowledge of dealing with domestic abuse. By acting as a link between the victims and other experts, the organization establishes a highly effective environment for reporting and eliminating domestic violence in society. Multiple studies have found that victims of domestic abuse are more likely to feel comfortable talking to an IDVA than other parties like the police and experts from social care. IDVAs ensure that the victim’s needs are always centralized in any discussion, decision, and strategy implemented to help the victim deal with the issue. This element characterizes the Victim support strategy as the link between the victim and other parties like housing services, the police, civil and criminal courts, probation services, mental health support, and benefits advice.
Victim Support provides a key understanding and approach to domestic violence. It offers in-depth construction of elements that could be key in making policies relevant to the social issue. It is key to highlight that the police underplay domestic violence; hence the organization’s perspective focuses on increasing police response to domestic violence. Promoting increased communication and publicity efforts around domestic abuse is one of the major strategies that the organization seeks to achieve. The organization characterizes communication and publicity as crucial to constructing policies that could impact the contemporary trends of domestic abuse in England and Wales. The organization has the objective of ensuring that policies that have already been implemented and proven efficient in both England and Wales should be implemented collectively in the region. Adopting an already proven strategy is a major objective of the organization as it seeks to diversify the strategies and policies formulated concerning the issue of domestic abuse. Considering the organization’s access to the data that characterize the domestic abuse situation in wales and England, it provides a detailed analysis and solution to the relationship between the police and IDVAs (Alex et al. 2017, 10). Studies have highlighted the gender of the police and IDVA is key in ensuring that various parties feel free and comfortable in providing details associated with the case. The policy research approach taken by the organization is characterized by the need to be evidence-driven, as highlighted by the need to centralize the victim in shaping its decisions and strategies related to policies and resource distribution among the victim population. The court system is one of the less targeted parts of the criminal and justice system, considering that the issue of delivering a verdict drives it, and this eclipses the need to centralize the victim’s needs in the court process. This element has made the organization promote various changes to the steps of the court process. This is effectively demonstrated by the need to have separate rooms, experts, and court divisions focused on the victim and ensuring the victims are not subject to the normal court processes known to expose the victim to various issues and environments.
The organization is heavily invested in campaigning for the need to eliminate various barriers to accessing the criminal justice system. One of the major campaigns for the organization is to reform the police department’s approach to the issue of domestic abuse. The police are one of the major shareholders closely linked with efforts to eliminate domestic abuse in England and Wales. This element has resulted in the organization’s campaign to ensure those police officers in the region are trained n different aspects of domestic abuse. By promoting police reform, the organization ensures that the department is conscious of the impact of various factors like gender on the process and the likely result of a case involving domestic abuse. Extensive collaboration among the players in the criminal justice system is another huge campaign pushed by the organization. Collaboration ensures that insights made by some party like the police could sequentially be inherited by other parties, thus ensuring that they are conscious of various needs surrounding the case. The information acquired by the police could help courts understand the best method to conduct a domestic abuse case while protecting the victim from various triggers, both physical and mental.
Multiple factors influence the behavior of a victim of domestic abuse. These factors can be beneficial and consequential for the justice process. The organization and other studies have highlighted different barriers to the justice process for the victims of domestic abuse. This is captured by the data considering that 79% of victims do not report their experiences to the relevant authority.
It is also highly concerning for the refugee population since only one in five women report their experiences, especially in a situation where they have dealt with the perpetrator before. Concerns associated with the perpetrator are a major deterrence for reporting the crime. Many concerns are shared by the victims of domestic abuse regarding the perpetrator since many feel the perpetrator is already in a position of advantage, thus undermining the legal process. Man victims identify fear of further violence from the perpetrator since they may be intimidated by various personal factors associated with the perpetrator. The perpetrator may have financial, social, and moral authority advantage over the victim; thus, many are intimidated from reporting the crime (Alex et al. 2017, 8). Victims feel that approaching the police would put them in more danger than helping the situation. There also exist social and cultural barriers that have been established over long periods in human history. Issues like patriarchal societies make it hard to report domestic abuse since some societies may have normalized domestic abuse as part of the relationship. These barriers limit the efforts of various parties as per making sure the victims use the cases provided to report domestic abuse. Living in a community with a high rate of domestic abuse reduces the victim’s probability of reporting the crime. Concerns for the children also deter many victims from reporting domestic abuse to the relevant authority (Alex et al. 2017, 11).
Many victims feel that reporting domestic abuse exposes their children to various social and legal elements. Children are likely to be introduced to social services, which has had a bad reputation among the population in both England and wales. The care for the children forces many to forego reporting the crime as many feel the process may have a mental and physical toll on the children. Housing and finance after reporting the crime also play a role in downplaying reporting the crime since these social problems formulate the future of the victim and their family. Housing and finance are key problems that determine the socioeconomic level of a person and thus are a huge concern for the organization’s objectives (Alex et al. 2017, 12).
The efficiency of the police and the CJS is another major social problem to the objectives highlighted by the organization. The contemporary state of the CJS limits the organization’s ability to achieve its objectives. This is because many people do not trust the system due to its limitation in centralizing the concerns and needs of the victim.
Despite the low reporting rates for the victims of domestic abuse, the origination’s research found that there exist different factors that may push the victim to report the crime. The finding backs this argument that victims are likely to report the crime if they or their children are in immediate danger. Feeling threatened or watching the children feeling threatened was identified as an incentive to report the perpetrator. Personal and children’s safety is of key importance to different societal parties, hence the influence of reporting the crime. Social and expert support has also been identified as a huge incentive to report domestic abuse. The presence of family, domestic abuse advocates, and IDVAs increases the victim’s chances of opening up about the crime, thus increasing the probability of reporting the crime. How the police educate themselves is also highly impactful on how the victim understands the importance of reporting domestic abuse (Alex et al. 2017, 25).
Despite the timely arrival, there is a presence of evidence that suggests that the police need to be more empathetic towards the victims. Empathy is key in dealing with victims of domestic abuse, and considering the police are among the first responders, their traits are of key concern to the victims.
This financing is also closely related to the need for police officers to transfer information and the case to the appropriate support services. Many victims have identified referrals to support services as crucial to getting justice after experiencing domestic abuse. Implementation of better commination is another major need identified with domestic abuse. Different parties have identified better communication as vital to ensuring that different experts efficiently deal with domestic abuse victim.
The findings also demonstrate the need to make various improvements in criminal courts. Pretrial contact with the perpetrator increases the victim’s anxiety and fear, which greatly impacts how they conduct themselves during the next processes. Cross-examination is another issue victims identified as causing a huge emotional toll on them. Victims also highlighted the need for special measures that may trigger various factors associated with the case (Alex et al. 2017, 27). In the courts, there is a need to implement a special measure that makes the victim comfortable as they actively participate in the court proceedings. Measurers like putting up curtains help increase the victim’s confidence and the probability of stating various influential acts. Victims and experts also identify support from domestic abuse advocates as crucial to acquiring justice for the victim of domestic violence.
Alex, M, Ania, M, and Thea, F 2017, ‘Survivor’s Justice,’ How Victims And Survivors Of Domestic Abuse Experiences The Criminal Justice System, pp. 1-39.