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Introducing VISION research on Domestic Homicide Reviews at the Vulnerability and Policing Futures Conference

Dr Darren Cook

Blog by Dr Darren Cook, VISION Research Fellow in Natural Language Processing

Earlier this month, Dr Elizabeth (Lizzie) Cook and I had the opportunity to introduce our developing project on Domestic Homicide Reviews (DHRs) at the Vulnerability and Policing Futures Research Centre’s second annual conference in Leeds. The two-day event brought together academics, practitioners, and policymakers to explore the themes of reducing harm and strengthening justice.

In a session on Measuring Vulnerability: Harnessing Routinely Collected Data, we outlined how natural language processing (NLP) could be used to improve access to and analysis of the Home Office’s growing library of DHR reports. We highlighted both the opportunities and challenges of applying advanced computational methods to such sensitive material and set out our vision for building a tool to make the full corpus of DHRs more searchable. By improving searchability, researchers and policymakers can more effectively explore recurring themes and insights within the reports.

Our talk prompted thoughtful questions and constructive feedback from an interdisciplinary audience of around 30 participants, which will help shape the next stages of the project.

What are Domestic Homicide Reviews?

Domestic Homicide Reviews (DHRs) are reports that examine the circumstances surrounding a death resulting from suspected domestic violence or abuse. Introduced in the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act (2004) and implemented in 2011, these reviews provide a detailed, chronological account of the victim and perpetrator. They are written in narrative form and aim to identify lessons that can be learned from a domestic homicide.

Since June 2023, over 600 reports have been made publicly available through an online repository with a view to improving transparency and to encourage greater opportunity for learning.

Why does access remain a challenge?

Despite the progress made with the repository, researchers and practitioners still face barriers that limit how effectively the reports can be used. In our talk, we focused on two key challenges: (1) At present, each report must be extracted individually, which is impractical for projects working across hundreds of documents, and (2) The repository’s search functions rely on a fixed set of tags added by the Home Office. Users cannot create new categories or adjust existing ones, which restricts the kinds of questions researchers can ask. As a result, while the reports are technically public, their full potential as a resource remains difficult to unlock.

Building better access

Our presentation built on earlier consultation work with public and third sector organisations, and we shared some of the next steps we are planning. These will be set out in more detail in an upcoming research protocol paper co-authored with Sumanta Roy, a member of our VISION Advisory Board and Head of Research, Evaluation & Development at Imkaan, and Ravi Thiara, VISION Co-Investigator and Professor at University of Warwick.

Our central idea is to explore the feasibility of creating a structured dataset that summarises the key features of the DHR library. This would capture information such as victim and perpetrator demographics, the commissioning body, safeguarding risks, recommendations, and missed opportunities.

To do this, we are developing a tool that applies text-mining and natural language processing (NLP) techniques to extract information directly from the reports. The resulting dataset will be both searchable and filterable, allowing users to focus on increasingly specific subsets of the material. We also want to build functionality that enables users to download customised sets of reports rather than relying on individual downloads.

How will this help researchers and policymakers?

By improving access, searchability, and flexibility, our project will make it possible to work with DHRs at a scale that has not previously been possible. Instead of relying on small samples or manual searches, researchers will be able to look across hundreds of cases, identify recurring patterns, and ask new kinds of questions. The creation of a structured dataset will also support more consistent and comparable findings, helping to strengthen collaboration between academics, practitioners, and policymakers.

In the longer term, we hope this work will not only make DHR research more efficient but also ensure that the lessons within these reports are more easily applied to safeguarding practice.

Looking back to the conference

Presenting at the Vulnerability and Policing Futures Conference gave us the chance not only to share our ideas but also to test them with an audience of experts. The thoughtful discussions and questions we received will help guide how we take this project forward.

For further information, please contact Darren at darren.cook@citystgeorges.ac.uk

Image from Adobe Stock subscription.

Learning across statutory reviews

This VISION policy briefing summarises themes arising from the symposium, Learning across statutory review practices: origins, ambitions and future directions, held as part of the 2024 VISION Annual Conference on 11 June.

The symposium was led by Dr Elizabeth Cook, City, UoL, and Dr James Rowlands, University of Westminster.

The following panellists introduced several of the statutory reviews and shared their thoughts on lessons learnt and the future:

  • Dr Bethan Davies, Cardiff University: Wales Single Unified Safeguarding Review (SUSR)
  • Professor Emeritus Jonathan Dickens, University of East Anglia: Child safeguarding
  • Frank Mullane, Advocacy After Fatal Domestic Abuse (AAFDA): Ambitions for learning and change across systems
  • Professor Emeritus Michael Preston-Shoot, University of Bedfordshire: Adult safeguarding
  • Sumanta Roy, Imkaan: Domestic Homicide Reviews

After the series of presentations, as part of breakout roundtable discussions, conference attendees were invited to explore how different statutory reviews are conducted and practised, their ambitions, and challenges for the future.

This briefing is for practitioners and managers who participate in or lead statutory reviews. The briefing will also be of interest to policy makers and senior leaders from local and national government who commission or oversee statutory review processes.

The policy is available in the public domain, Learning across statutory review practices: Origins, ambitions, and future directions (figshare.com).

For further information, please contact Lizzie at elizabeth.cook@city.ac.uk.

Consultation response to the revised Statutory Guidance for the Conduct of Domestic Homicide Reviews

This post is by Dr James Rowlands, Lecturer in Criminology at the University of Westminster and Dr Elizabeth Cook, Senior Lecturer at the Violence and Society Centre at City, University of London and Co-Investigator of the VISION consortium research project.

The post draws on a consultation response to the revised Statutory Guidance for the Conduct of Domestic Homicide Reviews prepared by James, Lizzie, and Sarah Dangar, PhD candidate at City, University of London.

Last month, the Home Office launched the draft revised statutory guidance for conducting domestic homicide reviews with an open consultation ongoing until 29th July 2024.

What to make of it? On the one hand, a revision is well overdue, given the guidance was last issued in 2016. Considering the developments in the domestic abuse policy landscape, it was likely that significant changes to the statutory guidance were going to be required. First, by 2023, around 1000 reviews had been completed. Therefore, 13 years after their first implementation and seven years since the last revision to the statutory guidance, we have a better sense of what works and what does not. Second, the government’s reform agenda – including the introduction of a DHR library, the change to the definition and naming of reviews, the roll-out of training for chairs, and the development of an oversight mechanism by the Domestic Abuse Commissioner – means that there is an ever-developing framework to support the conduct of reviews. Third, the evidence base on reviews is expanding. That includes a better picture of case profiles, learning, and recommendations. The recent reports from Beyond the Streets (looking at reviews concerning individuals involved in the sex industry) and HALT (reporting on an analysis of a sample of 302 reviews following domestic abuse-related deaths between 2012 and 2019) are examples of this. There is also an increasing amount of research into how reviews are undertaken, including research which has explored their complexity in practice (see, for example, this recent article into ethics in review that we authored with colleagues). Yet, much also remains unclear, including the impact that reviews have and the best way to track this (as summarised in this recent article).

Given all these developments, any revision to the statutory guidance needed to be more than an update in content: it also needed to set out a future direction of travel and account for what’s been achieved.

So, does the draft revised statutory guidance deliver and address the need for an update while also taking on these broader issues?

That’s something we have been considering, and which led us to bring stakeholders together online and in person at a roundtable last week in an event co-hosted by the Violence and Society Centre (City, University of London) as part of the UKPRP-funded VISION consortium, and Westminster University’s Centre for Social Justice Research (CSJR). The aim of the roundtable wasn’t to develop a shared consultation response because individual attendees and their organisations will be doing that for themselves. Instead, we wanted to create a space for dialogue. Given the rich and varied conversations between the stakeholders about the draft revised statutory guidance, we think it’s fair to say we achieved that aim. Moreover, if the conversations we heard are a guide, the Home Office will receive some well-thought-through submissions from various stakeholders in due course.

The roundtable was also an opportunity for us to test our thinking. Since then, having worked to finalise our own consultation response, simply put, our view is that while the draft of the revised statutory guidance is a start, it doesn’t go far enough.

Let’s begin with the positives. There are some valuable changes, including breaking the text into different sections and introducing more detailed templates. It is also good to see a commitment to underlying principles, including learning and implementing change, the importance of being victim-centred and trauma-informed, and the role of family and others who knew a victim. In addition, the requirement of a rationale from Community Safety Partnerships (CSPs) where a decision is made not to commission a review is a very positive step in increasing the transparency of commissioning processes at a local level. Other changes relate to detail on what it means to be an Independent Chair in practice and the Panel as ‘co-producers’.

Yet, at the same time, as drafted, the revised statutory guidance seems incomplete, lacking in both breadth and depth.

For example, while an emphasis on being victim-centred and trauma-informed is welcome, how to achieve and operationalise this in practice is unclear. There are also significant gaps. For example, while recognising the importance of expertise on a review panel, the draft leaves unaddressed questions of capacity (both for Community Safety Partnerships who commission reviews and to ensure specialist domestic abuse service and led-by-and-for provision is around the table). Missing, too, is a workable definition of what constitutes a domestic abuse-related suicide, something that we know is affecting commissioning decisions (as explored in this article). Even more, the draft guidance risks repeating the confusion around suicides by extending the scope of reviews to include deaths from neglect and unexplained circumstances while similarly leaving them undefined. Finally, the sections on what happens after a review – including publication and the delivery of action plans – lack detail.

Given reviews are a response to profound trauma for families and communities, as drafted, the changes proposed do not match the importance of the task. In short, there is more to do to ensure we can work together to honour victims, hold perpetrators accountable, identify and share learning, and drive meaningful change.

To progress this work, we make a simple call: we would encourage the Home Office to adopt the spirit and practice of review. To do that, we make two important recommendations. First, the Home Office should review its mechanisms for oversight and accountability to date. This means undertaking an appraisal of its responsibility over reviews since 2011 and what has changed since this point. Second, the Home Office should engage in meaningful co-production as it moves forward, ideally by establishing a taskforce that includes representation from key stakeholders to complete the work to finalise the revised statutory guidance.

We’ve set out our thinking on the draft revised statutory guidance, including how to develop it further, in a consultation response co-written with Sarah Dangar. While we hope that the UK government will consider our recommendations, we also hope that our response is of interest to others as they finalise their consultation responses too. You can access our consultation response to read and / or download below.

If you would like to respond to the consultation, further information, as well as guidance on how to submit a response is available here.

A written response from Dr James Rowlands, Dr Elizabeth Cook & Sarah Dangar – 1 download

DHR-Statutory-Guidance-Consultation-ResponseDownload