Sexual crimes against women and girls are severely underreported to the police, allowing for impunity of perpetrators and causing huge socioeconomic costs for survivors and the society. In this article Daria Denti and Simona Iammarino show that an effective way to stimulate survivors to report is allowing them to access nearby specialised support

Denti, Daria

Iammarino, Simona

English

LSE Research Online

Daria Denti Simona Iammarino March 18th, 2021The geography of Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG):support services and the reporting of sexual crimes inEngland and Wales0 comments | 2 sharesEstimated reading time: 3 minutesSexual crimes against women and girls are severely underreported to the police,allowing for impunity of perpetrators and causing huge socioeconomic costs forsurvivors and the society. In this article Daria Denti and Simona Iammarino show thatan effective way to stimulate survivors to report is allowing them to access nearbyspecialised support.Considering England and Wales, data shows that the local availability of refuges andadvisors increases the propensity to report sexual crimes to the police by 20 per centper year. These  gures are useful to understand which initiatives are effective incountering the under reporting of sexual crimes – an open and highly policy-relevantquestion needing sound answers to help survivors to come forward and seek justice.Among the programmes that should stimulate sexual crime reporting, the provision ofevenly geographically distributed and 24/7 available Violence Against Women and Girls(VAWG) support services is considered particularly relevant by practitioners andinstitutions. Observers suggest that a stimulus towards reporting the crime comesfrom spatially close support services for survivors of sexual offences, like refuges andadvisors. Still, the evidence about the effects of nearby support on the reporting ofsexual crimes remains scattered and mainly qualitative.Existing research from the British Medical Association and from the EuropeanCommission details this, showing that survivors feel more empowered after referring toa specialised support service close by. By being able to reach out for help withouthaving to bear the further anxiety given by searching, travelling and waiting, survivorsfeel less isolated. The local availability of support services also signals that there is alocal commitment to a culture of respect of women, which can contribute to reducingthe perception of socio-cultural prejudices, reinforcing the survivors’ willingness to seekjustice.However, qualitative investigations do not convey any measure of the impact of nearbyVAWG support services on the survivors’ propensity to report. These impact measuresare important for policymakers who are working to prioritise local VAWG supportservices, given that such services are disappearing from many communities as aconsequence of the combination of austerity-driven reduction in the governmentspending on social initiatives, and of the devolution of these initiatives to the local level.Evidence on the impact of VAWG support services on crime reporting is also needed tocontribute to the assessment of the overall effectiveness of these services given thattheir even spatial distribution is speci ed as mandatory by the Istanbul Conventionsigned in 2017, the  rst legally binding instrument covering all forms of violenceagainst women in Europe.services are disappearing from many communities asa consequence of the combination of austerity-drivenreduction in the government spending on socialinitiatives, and of the devolution of these initiatives tothe local levelIn the UK, before 2011 the funding of VAWG support services pivoted on state-levelring-fenced grants  owing to local authorities on the basis of their need assessment,although with no mandatory commitment for local authorities to subsequently use thefunds or to provide VAWG support services. Figures show that the provision of VAWGsupport services grew across places. In 2011, the austerity programme introduced astructural shift from state-level funding to local commissioning, devolving to localauthorities the scope, the scale, the nature and the funding of VAWG services.The austerity programme also imposed relevant cuts to local public budget spendingthrough the reduction of the overall  ow of state-level grants supporting local budgets.Hence, local authorities had to decide whether or not to provide VAWG support servicesconsidering their tight budget decisions. The sizeable impact of the severe budget cutshas led to more than 75 per cent of England’s local authorities slashing their spendingon VAWG services between 2011 and 2017, with a net reduction in the number of localVAWG services, and an increase in the spatial dispersion of services around 25 percent.The sizeable impact of the severe budget cuts has ledto more than 75 per cent of England’s local authoritiesslashing their spending on VAWG services between2011 and 2017Our research estimates the impact of VAWG local support services on the survivors’propensity to report, comparing changes in reporting in places where these servicescontinued to be locally available after 2011, to changes in reporting in places wheresuch local support were not locally provided after the austerity devolution. We collecteddata – disaggregated at the levels of authority that provide VAWG services, – about thechanging landscape of VAWG services across England and Wales covering the period2004-2016. We performed a comparative case study contrasting police reporting inBrighton and Hove, where the support services continued to be provided, to policereporting in an algorithm-designed place designed from a weighted average of placesthat were similar to Brighton and Hove before the introduction of the local policy(counterfactual place) but with no provision of local support services for survivors ofsexual crimes after the policy shift.In Figure 1 below, the black line shows the trend in police reporting of sexual crimes inBrighton and Hove. The green line shows the same trend in the counterfactual place.The trend in the propensity to report for the latter closely matches the correspondingtrend for Brighton and Hove before the introduction of the local policy in the latter post-2011. The upward trend between 2008 and 2010 is concurrent with the commitment bythe UK Government to improve VAWG support services. The gap between the two linesmeasures the impact of the provision of support services in stimulating policereporting. The vertical black dashed line marks the devolution of the provision of VAGSsupport services to the local level; the vertical red solid line marks the beginning of thecountry-wide high-impact media campaign referring to the “Operation Yewtree” in 2013.From this comparison, our results show that the provision of specialised supportservices increased the propensity to report sexual crimes by around 20 per cent on ayearly base. The positive impact of support services in stimulating survivors to seekjustice does not vanish when other measures that favour reporting are implemented,such as having female police o cers and high-pro le media campaigns. In fact, as isalso evident in Figure 1, the reporting of sexual crimes in Brighton and Hove remainedhigher than the reporting in the counterfactual place even during the media coverage ofOperation Yewtree – the high-pro le investigation into sexual offences of certain public gures – that is acknowledged to have promoted a country-wide rise in reporting ofsexual crimes.From a policy perspective, our results corroborate the importance of a spatially evenprovision of VAWG services for the survivors of sexual violence as an effective initiativeto counter under reporting of sexual crimes. The reduction of under-reporting of sexualcrimes, and the consequent drop in the impunity of perpetrators, contribute to breakingthe vicious cycle of repeated victimisation, on-the-loose offenders searching forsurvivors and the consequent vast socioeconomic costs. Notably, the results from ourFigure 1study endorse the aim of the Istanbul Convention, and the stances of practitioners,women-rights organisations and institutions – such as the Council of Europe and theUnited Nations – that have been campaigning for the spatially even distribution ofspecialised services for the survivors of sexual crimes.This blog is based on the report by the authors: Coming Out of the Woods. Do localsupport services in uence the propensity to report sexual violence?The views, thoughts and opinions expressed in this blog post are those of theauthor(s) only, and do not necessarily re ect LSE’s or those of the LSE Centre forWomen, Peace and Security.Photo by Mika Baumeister on UnsplashAbout the authorDaria Denti is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Department of Geography &amp;Environment of the London School of Economics and Political Science (UK). Hermain research interests are: the spatial socioeconomic determinants ofoppressive violent behaviours; geography of human rights violation and policyevaluation. www.dariadenti.orgDaria DentiSimona Iammarino is Professor of Economic Geography in the Department ofGeography &amp; Environment of the London School of Economics and PoliticalScience (UK). Her main research interests are: Geography of innovation andglobalisation; Regional and local economic development and policy.http://www.lse.ac.uk/geography-and-environment/people/academic-staff/simona-iammarinoSimona Iammarino

The geography of Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG): support services and the reporting of sexual crimes in England and Wales

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The geography of Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG): support services and the reporting of sexual crimes in England and Wales

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