Extracts from Welsh Assembly proceedings - Dec 11
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Extract from Welsh Assembly: Questions to the Leader of the House
Mohammad Asghar (Oscar) AM: Leader of the house, the Equality
and Human Rights Commission report 'Is Wales Fairer?' states that
domestic abuse continues to be under-reported. It is a sad fact
that more domestic violence offences are committed than are
reported to and recorded by the police. In view of this,
does...Request free trial
Extract from Welsh
Assembly: Questions to the Leader of the House
Mohammad Asghar (Oscar) AM: Leader of the house, the Equality and Human Rights Commission report 'Is Wales Fairer?' states that domestic abuse continues to be under-reported. It is a sad fact that more domestic violence offences are committed than are reported to and recorded by the police. In view of this, does the leader of the house share my concern that the inspectorate of constabulary has found that two Welsh police forces failed to record 8,400 crimes in the last four years, including 110 domestic abuse cases?
Julie James AM
(Leader of the House and Chief
Whip): Yes, we know that a
lot of domestic abuse is hidden. We do
know that people don't come forward and that there
are inconsistencies of evidence across the piece.
So, we work very hard with the Police and Crime Commissioners, and
actually with the lead police and crime
commissioner, who is an ex-colleague that you'll all be
familiar with, Jeff Cuthbert, who's taken the lead
in this regard for the police forces around the right
procedures, identification of and encouragement of people
to come forward and then the right processes.
And one of the things that the national advisers have been advising us on in their now first year of office is to make sure that we have consistency across the piece in Wales, because a lot of these services are delivered by third sector organisations. And so, they're looking to see that we have a consistency of service, so that, just to give you an example, if you show up somewhere as a victim of domestic abuse—if you show up on a Wednesday morning in Ceredigion, you would get onto the same pathway as if you show up on a Friday night in the Heath hospital accident and emergency department. And making sure that you have that consistency approach across the piece is very much where we're going, and we have good co-operation with the police forces. But the work is still very much ongoing. We know that there's under-reporting. We're very pleased that the figures are coming up. Deputy Presiding Officer, it's always difficult to know whether the rise in figures is because there's a rise in incidents or whether it's a rise in people coming forward and being more secure in the system, and I suspect it's a little of both in some areas. We're analysing the figures to make sure that we take the right lesson from the data. Extract from Welsh Assembly: Statement on a distinct approach to the penal system in Wales
Alun Davies AM (Cabinet
Secretary for Local Government and Public
Services): To continue to make progress and
improvements in all areas of criminal justice, tackling the
whole system is crucial. I want us to make quicker progress
in certain areas of the system, namely youth offending and
female offending. We have developed new ways of working and
tested new models of delivery and we have already made
progress. Since last year, my officials having been working
across the Government, with the United Kingdom Government,
the Prison and Probation Service in Wales, Police and Crime Commissioners, and a
range of other stakeholders in justice, health and
education to develop and deliver new approaches to youth
offending and female offending...
...On female offending, we have supported a women’s pathfinder programme, diverting women away from custody and providing a range of support. I would also like to express my gratitude to the partners, in particular Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service and the Police and Crime Commissioners involved in developing the women’s pathfinder and the female offending draft blueprint, for all of their work to date... ...In creating the policing board for Wales, which met for the first time a few weeks ago, we are looking at developing an approach through the police and through agencies working alongside the police that will treat vulnerability in a way that would have been unimaginable 10, 20 or 30 years ago. So, we're changing the way that we police many of our communities, and a conversation I had yesterday with the chief constable and the police and crime commissioner in Dyfed-Powys reflected many of the sorts of conversations that we've been having, and I believe the policing board will enable us to begin the job of bringing together, if you like, different arms of policy, different agents of policy, and different authorities to work in a more coherent way and to treat vulnerability in a way we simply couldn't do before... To read all the exchanges, CLICK HERE |