Quantitative Analysis of Domestic Homicide Reviews October 2020 – September 2021 (accessible)

Question 1

1.  Executive Summary

Accepted Answer

Statistics from Domestic Homicide Reviews

This report summarises information from Domestic Homicide Reviews (DHRs) for the 12 months from October 2020. DHRs are multi-agency reviews, commissioned by Community Safety Partnerships into the deaths^{[footnote 1]} of adults which may have resulted from violence, abuse, or neglect; by a person to whom they were related, or with whom they had an intimate relationship, or where they were a member of the same household. Reviews should also take place where a victim took their own life (suicide) and the circumstances give rise to concern.

Overview

This report presents key information from data provided by108 Domestic Homicide reviews which were assessed through the Home Office quality assurance process from October 2020 to the end of September 2021.
Sixty-nine percent of the deaths in the reviews occurred in 2018 and 2019.
Across all the reviews there have been 113 victims (of which 15 were, or appeared to be, victims of domestic abuse who died by suicide).
The age of victims was from under 18 yrs to 92yrs (the average was 43 years old). The oldest perpetrator was aged 88 and the average age was 39.
77 percent of the victims were female and 23% were male. For perpetrators, 89% were male and 10% female.
The 108 reviews have information on 94 perpetrators.
In 40% of the DHRs children were living or staying in the household.
Analysing the relationships between the victims and perpetrators shows that for 68% of the victims the perpetrator was a partner or ex-partner. Within these relationships 29% were partners who had separated or were separating from the perpetrator.
Thirty-two percent of the victims had a family relationship with the perpetrator and, of these, half the victims were parents.

Victims

Fifty-eight percent of victims had vulnerabilities. One third of the vulnerabilities was mental ill-health, for 27% it was problem alcohol use and for 18% illicit drug use.
Looking at the mental health issues identified for half the victims, of these issues 22% was depression, followed by low mood / anxiety.
It is estimated that 36% of victims had been the target of an abuser before.
Aggravating factors were recorded in 61% of the reviews. Of these, coercive control was the largest and financial control second.

Perpetrators

Sixty-eight percent of perpetrators were identified as having a vulnerability with mental ill- health being the most common, followed by problem alcohol use and illicit drug use.
Sixty percent of the perpetrators had mental health issues, with depression and suicidal thoughts together being one third of these.
Also 60% of perpetrators where information was given were recorded as having a previous offending history.
Slightly over half (55%) of perpetrators were known to agencies as abusers. Of these agencies 44% were the Police, 18% Probation, seven percent Children’s Social Services and four percent Adult Social Care.
The reviews were asked to identify whether the perpetrators were being managed or supervised by, or attending a number of different services. This was the case for 40% of perpetrators and, of these, for 37% this was for mental health, 28% Probation and 21% for drugs and alcohol.

Family contributions

Families made contributions to 78% of the reviews. Seventy percent were consulted about the terms of reference and 75% received the draft report to comment on.
Support from an expert specialist advocate was taken up by 43% of the families.

Comparisons with previous reports quality assured in 2019-20

Comparisons with the previous 2019-20 report can be influenced by the quality of the data. Differences or similarities should be seen as indicative rather than definite.
A decrease in the proportion of reviews in London was matched by an increase in South East England.
A larger proportion of perpetrators were male, an increase from 83% to 89%.
The means by which victims were killed saw an increase in blunt force trauma and a decrease in strangulation.
The proportion of reviews where the victim had died by suicide increased slightly from 11% to 14%.
The proportion of both victims and perpetrators who are White has increased (for victims 80% to 86%, for perpetrators from 74% to 85%).
The proportion of perpetrators where mental health issues have been identified increased from 31% in the 2019-20 report to 60% in the 2020-21 report.
In the 2019-20 report 46% of victims had been the target of an abuser before, in the 2020- 21 reports this is 36%.
In terms of the offenders known to agencies as an abuser, the share of these known by Probation increased from seven percent to 18%.
In the 2020-21 reports 40% of perpetrators were being supervised or managed by an agency in the previous report this was 15%. Some of the change may come from improvements in the data recorded.

Question 2

2.  Introduction

Accepted Answer

1. This report summarises information submitted from Domestic Homicide Reviews (DHRs) for the twelve months from October 2020 to the end of September 2021.

2. As the “Multi-agency Statutory Guidance for the Conduct of Domestic Homicide Reviews” ^{[footnote 2]} states, a DHR is a multi-agency review, commissioned by a Community Safety Partnership, of the circumstances in which the death of a person aged 16 or over has, or appears to have, resulted from violence, abuse, or neglect by a person to whom they were related or with whom they were, or had been, in an intimate personal relationship, or a member of the same household. Reviews should also take place where a victim took their own life (suicide) and the circumstances give rise to concern. If, for example it emerges that there was coercive controlling behaviour in the relationship, a review should be undertaken, even if a suspect is not charged with an offence or they are tried and acquitted.

3. The purpose of a DHR is to:

Establish lessons to be learned from the domestic homicide for the way local professionals and organisations can work individually and together to safeguard victims;
Identify lessons both within and between agencies, how and within what timescales they will be acted on, and what is expected to change as a result;
Apply the lessons to service responses;
Prevent domestic violence and homicide and improve service responses for all domestic violence and abuse victims and their children by developing a co-ordinated multi-agency approach to ensure that abuse is identified and responded to effectively at the earliest opportunity;
Contribute to a better understanding of the nature of domestic violence and abuse; and
Highlight good practice.

4. This report is of 108 Domestic Homicide Reviews which have been through the quality assurance process set out by the Home Office.^{[footnote 3]}

5. The reviews are of 113 victims^{[footnote 4]}, 15 are people who died by suicide.

6. The report is structured to give:

Information on trends, location, age and sex of victims and perpetrators;
Characteristics or experience of victims in terms of their vulnerability, mental health, and whether they had been the target of an abuser before;
Characteristics or experience of perpetrators, including vulnerabilities and mental health, any previous offending history, and details of criminal charges;
Contributions from and support for families in the DHR process; and
Comparison with the previous report which covered October 2019 to September 2020.

7. Much of the information in the report is given as percentages. These are rounded to the nearest percent and, because of this, in some cases they do not add up to 100. Answers to some questions in the management information requested can include relatively large numbers where the answers have been given as “Not Known”, this is indicated in the text.

Question 3

3.  Domestic Homicide Reviews: trends, location and demography

Accepted Answer

8. This chapter begins with national trends in domestic homicides. It then describes information from the Domestic Homicide Reviews on the dates of death, and the time between the death and when the reviews were submitted to the Home Office. This is followed with the number of reviews in each region. The chapter then provides information on the victims and the perpetrators including their age, sex, and relationships.

Trends in domestic homicides in England and Wales, 2010/11 to 2020/21

9. For context, Figure 1 shows the number of victims of domestic homicide from 2010/11 to 2020/21. These have fallen from 156 in 2010/11 to 114 in 2020/21. The number of victims has decreased by 27%, with the number of female victims declining by 38% while the number of male victims increased by eight percent.

Figure 1: Number of domestic homicides in England and Wales: 2010/11 to 2020/21

Source: Office for National Statistics, Homicide in England and Wales: year ending March 2021 - Appendix Tables. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/datasets/appendixtableshomicideinenglandandwales Table 31.

Domestic Homicide Reviews: date of death of victim

10. The DHRs in this report are the 108 which were reviewed by the Home Office Quality Assurance Panel from October 2020 to the end of September 2021. The time between the date of the victim’s death and the completion of the review is influenced by a range of factors, including:

Time of police investigation;
Completion of the criminal trial;
Coroner’s Inquest;
Contact with family members and others to enable them to contribute to the review;
Community Safety Partnership meetings; report sign off and submission to Home Office;
Quality assurance process through Home Office.

11. Figure 2 shows the years in which the victims in this report died. 2018 is the year with most deaths: 45 deaths being 42% of the total. 2019 is the year with second largest: 29 deaths.

Figure 2: Year of death of victims in DHRs

Location of the deaths of victims

12. The DHRs have taken place in 74 Local Authorities in England and five in Wales. Sixty Community Safety Partnerships have commissioned one DHR. Seven reviews were submitted within the timeframe of this report by the Cardiff Community Safety Partnership.^{[footnote 5]}

13. Table 1 shows where the deaths occurred by region in England and in Wales.^{[footnote 6]} Relating these to the number of people in each area, Wales has the highest rate of DHRs (3.8 per million) with East Midlands having the second highest rate (2.5 per million). The lowest rate was in the East of England (0.8 per million).

Table 1: Number of Domestic Homicide Reviews by region or nation

Region / Nation	Number of reviews
North East	3
North West	14
Yorkshire and the Humber	7
East Midlands	12
West Midlands	9
East	5
London	13
South East	20
South West	13
England	96
Wales	12
England and Wales	108

Age of victims and perpetrators

14. The average^{[footnote 7]} age of victims was 43 yrs old and the average age of perpetrators 39. The youngest victim was aged 11 and the oldest 92.^{[footnote 8]} The youngest perpetrators were aged 14^{[footnote 9]} and the oldest was aged 88.

15. Figure 3 shows the proportions of victims and perpetrators in different age groups. Two age groups, 18 to 29 and 30 to 39 each had 21% of victims. For perpetrators one quarter (25%) were also aged 18 to 29 and 24% were aged 40 to 49.

16. There are similar numbers of reviews where the victim was younger than the perpetrator compared to the reviews where the victim was older than the perpetrator. The overall similarity of age has differences which change depending on the nature of the relationship between the victim and perpetrator. If the victim was the partner of the perpetrator, then the average age of victims is three years younger than that of perpetrators. There were victims where there was a family relationship with the perpetrator. The section on Relationships between victims and perpetrators gives more detail - there are three victims where the victim was a child of the perpetrator and 21 victims who were the parent or grandparent of the perpetrator.

Figure 3: Percentage of victims and perpetrators by age

Sex of victims and perpetrators

17. In the reviews 77% of the victims were female and 23% were male. Eighty-nine percent of perpetrators were male and 10% were female, one perpetrator’s sex has been described as “in transition”.

Ethnicity

18. The proportions of victims and perpetrators by ethnicity are shown in Table 2.

Table 2: Ethnicity of victims and perpetrators

Ethnicity	Percent of DHR victims	Percent of DHR perpetrators
Asian/Asian British	9%	7%
Black/African/Caribbean/Black British	5%	9%
Other or multiple ethnic group	1%	0%
White: English/Welsh/Scottish/Northern Irish/British	74%	76%
White: any other White background	12%	9%

Note: For DHR victims (and perpetrators) the terms used for types of ethnicity are from the Government guidelines on categories: https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/style-guide/ethnic-groups. The percentages may not add to 100 as they are rounded to the nearest whole number.

Nationality

19. For victims, 90% were British, five percent were from other European countries and six percent were from other nations.^{[footnote 10]} The nationality of perpetrators was similar: 88% were British, six percent were from other European countries and seven percent were from other nations.

Dependent Children

20. In 40% of the DHRs children (aged under 18) were living, or regularly staying, in the household. Information is given in 29 of the DHRs on “were children present when the homicide occurred?”: in 45% of these 29 reviews children were present at the time of the homicide.

21. Children were subject to Child Protection procedures due to domestic abuse before the homicide in 11 DHRs. In four of these DHRs children were in the care of the local authority.

Relationships between victims and perpetrators

22. In the relationships between victims and perpetrators, 67% of the victims were or had been a partner of the perpetrator. For 71% of these victims the reviews used term partner, and for 29% the terms ex-partner or separating were used.

23. For 33% of victims the relationship can be described as familial. A more detailed breakdown is given in Table 3. This shows that in just over half the familial relationships the victim was a parent of the perpetrator.

Table 3: Type of familial relationship between victim and perpetrator

Familial relationship of victim to perpetrator	Number of victims	Percent victims with familial relationship
Child	3	9%
Grandparent	3	9%
Parent	19	54%
Sibling	4	11%
Other	6	17%
Total	35

Note: e.g., three of the victims were the child of the perpetrator. Their ages were 11, 23 and 35 yrs old. Where the victim was 11 years old, she was the second victim in the DHR

Method of Killing

24. The Domestic Homicide Reviews include the method of killing, summarised in Table 4. Close to half of the killings were by stabbing with a knife, and for one in five (20%) the cause of death was blunt force trauma. In 10 reviews more than one method of killing has been noted.

Table 4: Method of killing in Domestic Homicide Reviews

Method of killing	Percent
Blunt Force trauma	20%
Fire-Arm	5%
Stabbing Knife	48%
Strangulation	14%
Other	14%

Note: the percentages add to 101 due to rounding. There are three reviews with missing information and 10 reviews where more than one method killing has been recorded.

Question 4

4.  Characteristics of victims

Accepted Answer

25. This chapter summarises the information on the vulnerabilities and mental health issues identified and which were experienced by the 113 victims. It then looks at whether the victim was a carer or had a life limiting illness. This is followed by whether the victim had been the target of an abuser before and whether they had been referred to a Multi-Agency Risk Assessment Conference (MARAC).^{[footnote 11]} There is a summary of aggravating factors that the victim experienced. It finishes with the number of victims whose death was by suicide.

Vulnerability

26. The DHRs were asked to consider the vulnerabilities victims may have had, in terms of: - Illicit Drug Use - Mental Ill-Health - Physical Disability - Pregnancy - Problem Alcohol Use

Or to indicate another vulnerability.

27. Fifty-eight percent of victims were recorded with at least one vulnerability.^{[footnote 12]} It was indicated that 27% of the victims had one vulnerability and 19% two vulnerabilities. Overall, 31% of victims had more than one vulnerability.

28. Figure 4 shows the proportions of the types of vulnerability recorded. Thirty-three percent were issues of mental ill-health, 27% were problem alcohol use, and 18% illicit drug use.

Figure 4: Vulnerabilities of victims: where a vulnerability was noted

Mental health

29. Reviews also gave mental health issues identified and recorded for the victim, through the following categories:

Adjustment Disorder
Anxiety
Dementia or Alzheimer’s
Depression
Low mood / anxiety
Panic attacks
Psychosis
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Self-harm
Suicidal thoughts
Suicide attempts
Other

30. Mental ill-health issues were recorded for half the victims. These do not differentiate between those which existed prior to their experience of domestic abuse and those which were directly related to the abuse. For 13% of victims one mental ill-health identified in the DHR was noted, for 18% it was two, and for 19% there were more than two mental ill-health issues.

31. Figure 5 shows the proportion of the total mental ill-health issues identified for victims.^{[footnote 13]} Depression was 22% of the issues, low mood/anxiety was the second highest (17% of those reported), followed by 16% which were suicidal thoughts. The other mental health categories which each represent 10% or more were: anxiety, self-harm, and suicide attempts.

Figure 5: Reported mental ill-health issues of victims: by category

Carer

32. The DHRs indicated that 11% of the victims were carers.^{[footnote 14]} One of these victims had received a Carer’s Assessment (and nine had not).^{[footnote 15]}

Life limiting illness

33. The DHRs were asked to note if victims had a life limiting illness^{[footnote 16]}, and answers Yes or No were given for 79%. Of these, 11% were considered to have such an illness. Their average age was 64yrs old (six were aged under 65).

Target of abuser before

34. Information on whether the victim had been the target of an abuser before was given for 64% of victims.^{[footnote 17]} For these, 36% had been the target of an abuser before. For 46% of these victims the abuser was the previous partner.

Multi-Agency Risk Assessment Conference

35. Eighteen percent of victims had been referred to a Multi-Agency Risk Assessment Conference (MARAC). For the victims referred to a MARAC, 83% were heard before the victim’s death.

Aggravating factors

36. The information from the DHRs includes aggravating factors experienced by victims. The factors which were asked to be noted were: coercive control, digital stalking, forced marriage, honour-based violence, financial abuse, immigration issues, and physical stalking.

37. Aggravating factors were recorded in 61% of the reviews^{[footnote 18]} (and none were recorded in 31%). Of the reviews where aggravating factors were noted, in 42% of these there was one factor noted, and 58% where there was more than one.

38. Figure 6 shows the aggravating factors in the reviews where they were recorded. Coercive control is recorded in close to half of these reviews (48%), with financial control being the second highest (22%).

Figure 6: Occurrence of aggravating factors

Note: the data is from the 71 DHRs where a new MI form was used. This had Financial Abuse added as a category.

Suicide

39. In fifteen of the 108 reviews the victims died by suicide. Eleven were female and four were male. The average age of those taking their own life was 32.^{[footnote 19]}

Question 5

5.  Characteristics of perpetrators

Accepted Answer

40. This chapter summarises information on 94 perpetrators^{[footnote 20]} in the Domestic Homicide Reviews. The vulnerabilities and mental health categories considered are as those for victims. The chapter looks at whether the perpetrator was a carer or had a life limiting illness. Information is then summarised on whether the perpetrator had abused previous partners or family members and whether this was known to agencies. The chapter provides the number of perpetrators with a previous offending history and then reviews the court verdicts where a criminal trial had taken place.