Real Lives and Lost Lives: Making Sense of ‘Locked in’ Responses to Intimate Partner Homicide

Abstract

The problem of intimate partner homicide is featuring increasingly on national and international policy agendas. Over the last 40 years, responses to this issue have been characterised by preventive strategies (including 'positive' policing; the proliferation of risk assessment tools, and multi-agency working) and post-event analyses (including police inquiries and domestic homicide reviews). In different ways, each of these responses has become 'locked in' to policies. Drawing on an analysis of police inquiries into domestic homicides in England and Wales over a 10-year period, this paper will explore the nature of these 'locked in' responses and will suggest that complexity theory offers a useful lens through which to make sense of them and the ongoing consistent patterning of intimate partner homicide more generally. The paper will suggest this lens in embracing what is known and unknown affords a different way of thinking about and responding to this problem.

Constructing Fatality Review: A Policy Analysis of the Emergence of Domestic Homicide Reviews in England and Wales

“…Indeed, as noted earlier, the homicide rate became a performance indicator (NI34). Such concern also reflects the broader preoccupation of policymakers with the classification and management of risk, including in policy around domestic abuse and homicide ( Walklate & Hopkins, 2019 ).…”

Risk Refraction: Thoughts on the Victim-Survivor’s Risk Journey through the Criminal Justice Process

“…Pycroft and Bartollas (2018) make a compelling argument for understanding how historical practices in the criminal justice system have woven together concepts of utilitarian power in which risk assessment (particularly pertinent to the discussion here) has become locked in as measurable, doable activities (see also Walklate and Hopkins 2019). This implies putting risk and risk assessment tools in their place as parts of a system inseparable from, but not reducible to, the whole.…”

Putting Coercive Control into Practice: Problems and Possibilities

“…That focus has resulted in a range of policies featuring 'positive' policing 2 . Positive policing policies have travelled the globe sometimes with little appreciation of their efficacy in different cultural and political contexts outside of the northern hemisphere, (Goodmark 2015;Walklate and Hopkins, 2019) with this search for effective policing responses gathering momentum as the nature and extent of such abuse has become increasingly documented globally (see for example Walby et. al.…”