As an early career researcher in Criminology, I am interested in violent crime, domestic violence and threats to kill. Specifically, my research has focused on the measurement and outcomes of violence and how the harms of violence differ for different types of victims.
In Comparing Single Perpetrator and Multiple Perpetrator Violent Events in the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) I look at the complex structure of violent events reported by CSEW participants. My aim was to compare the needs of victims of violence perpetrated by groups, with the needs of victims of violence perpetrated by a single offender.
Victimisation surveys are the gold standard in measuring crime (Tilley and Tseloni 2016). They supplement police data. While police data can only capture crimes that are reported to the police, the CSEW captures up to 50% more by also including those events not reported to the police (ONS, 2020). We can use this to understand which types of crime and which victims are not appearing in police data.
My analyses of CSEW data have revealed that victims of multiple perpetrator violent events more often report their experiences to the police than victims of single perpetrator violent events. They were also more likely to receive medical attention and treatment at hospital after the violent incident and were also more likely to have contact with victims’ services.
These findings highlight how victims of violent events with one perpetrator may well be underrepresented in records drawn from police, health, and specialist services. It is important that research based on such data sources are aware of this issue in coverage.
Further research is needed to investigate why some victims do not access services and how access to services can be improved for those who are currently underrepresented.
Tilley, N., & Tseloni, A. (2016). Choosing and Using Statistical Sources in Criminology: What Can the Crime Survey for England and Wales Tell Us? Legal Information Management, 16(2), 78-90. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1472669616000219
On Thursday 19th October 2023, Dr Elizabeth Cook was invited to contribute to an event organised by Public Policy Exchange on Combatting Knife Crime in the UK. With contributions from Professor Lawrence Sherman, Professor Kevin Browne, Bruce Houlder CB KC DL, Nathaniel Levy, Dr Sue Roberts, and Sammy Odoi, the event examined current government strategy and policy responses to knife crime. Applying Carol Bacchi’s (1999; 2009) ‘What’s the problem represented to be?’ (WPR) approach, Elizabeth made the case for a gender analysis of ‘knife crime’, a summary of which is provided below.
What’s the problem represented?
Knife crime is a policy priority that ranks consistently high on the government agenda, appearing in key strategic areas such as serious violence, ‘gang’ involvement and exploitation, and children, young people, and vulnerability. Cutting across these strategic areas is a particular attention to tackling county lines and the misuse of drugs, restrictions on weapon-carrying and possession, early intervention and prevention programmes with young people, and community partnership responses and safeguarding.
What are the assumptions underpinning these representations?
There are key assumptions that underpin these representations of knife crime in public policy, each linked to specific ideas about:
who exactly is at risk,
where is considered to be safe,
who is vulnerable to harm,
and, on the whole, what forms of violence are deemed to be ‘serious’.
Constructions of knife crime as they currently stand, depict the problem as one committed primarily by and against men, occurring in public spaces, often between young people, and as an issue that is increasingly racialised in media and public discourse. The evidence base for each is not to be ignored and there are key takeaways from each policy approach which contribute one piece of a puzzle.
However, taking a WPR approach, there are questions to be asked: What is left unproblematic and what harms and whose voices are missed as a result?
There are key elements that are omitted from current policy approaches to knife crime and lessons to be learned from the violence against women and girls sector which have been relatively absent so far.
What is left unproblematic? Can the problem be thought about differently?
Various sources of evidence highlight that knives are consistently the most frequent method of killing in the context of intimate partner homicide by men against women. While the proportions fluctuate (e.g., ONS 2023; Femicide Census, 2020; VKPP, 2023), it stands that when women are killed by men, they are most likely killed using a knife.
What effects are produced by this problem representation?
Considering that up to 1 in 3 victims of homicides using a knife are women, it is problematic that there is so little analysis of sex/gender in policy responses (see, MOPAC 2017, for an exception). This has serious implications for how interventions are identified.
For example, efforts to regulate offensive weapons through legislation hit a wall when it comes to domestic abuse committed within the home. There have been several proposals over the years to either blunt kitchen knives or confiscate particular knives in the possession of known domestic abuse perpetrators – the assumption here being that the removal of the weapon is the removal of risk. However, the fundamental issue in domestic abuse is that anything is a weapon.
These raise questions about what (or who) is considered to be a source of risk and what can be done to reduce it.
How can we disrupt the problem representation?
While public health approaches to violence frequently invoke the need for multi-agency and partnership working, this must also translate to policy and implementation in strategy as well as practice. This means further work to avoid and break down policy siloes and assumptions in problem representations.
See the article, free to access, here:
Cook, E. A., & Walklate, S. (2022). Gendered objects and gendered spaces: The invisibilities of ‘knife’ crime. Current Sociology, 70(1), 61-76. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011392120932972
References
Bacchi, C. (1999) Women, Policy and Politics: The construction of policy problems, London: Sage.
Bacchi, C. (2009). Analysing policy: What’s the problem represented to be? Frenchs Forest, NSW: Pearson Australia
The Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) and its predecessor, the British Crime Survey (BCS), are widely used by both academics and government to assess the level of crime and its impact on society. While the survey has run since 1982, combining the multiple years of the survey can be complex and mistakes are easily made. As a researcher in criminology who frequently uses the CSEW and its predecessor, I have produced detailed Stata code to combine data from multiple survey years to support other researchers who also analyse the CSEW in Stata (or would like to start). I worked with the UK Data Service (UKDS) and the Office for National Statistics (ONS) to share the code and develop guidance for its use.
With this code, you can specify what you need, namely, which years of the Crime Survey you want to merge and if you want the adolescent and young adult panels, the bolt-on datasets that provide uncapped codes, and/or if you want to use the ethnic minority booster samples. As a result, the code can be easily tailored for each researcher’s needs.
By combining multiple survey sweeps, analysts can examine temporal trends. A combined file also enables analysts to look at low prevalence offences, population groups, or consequences, that do not have a high enough frequency in a single year.
Two examples are given below on how this integrated dataset provides new and exciting opportunities.
Example 1: Revealing gender and age differences in trends in experiencing violence
We used our integrated crime survey dataset to examine temporal trends in different types of violence, and whether these varied by gender and age.
After a rise in violent crime in the 1980s, there was a decade of steady decline followed by a decade of stability (blue line, Figure 1a). However, for other crimes, which can also be considered violent, the patterns observed are different. After a short period of decline in the 1990s, sexual violence against women remained relatively stable until around 2010 when it began to increase, reaching the 20 years high by 2020. Additionally, there has been a sharp rise in threats reported by women in the last 5 years of data, making threats almost as prevalent as at its peak in the late 1990s.
The trends in violent crime for men follow a broadly similar pattern as for women, but at a higher rate. Unlike women, however, men did not experience an increase in threats in the more recent period.
Figure 1. Prevalence of violence by type of violence and gender, 1982 to 2020
a) Proportion of women experiencing violence by type of violence
b) Proportion of men experiencing violence by type of violence
Source: Authors’ analysis using CSEW/BCS data from 1982 to 2019/2020.
Notes: Weighted proportions. Violent crime includes the following offences: Serious wounding, other wounding, common assault, attempted assault, serious wounding with sexual motive, other wounding with sexual motive. Sexual violence includes the following offences: rape, attempted rape and indecent assault. Due to low frequencies, sexual violence is not reported here for men.
Figure 2 reveals that there has been major change in the age profile of victims over the past 40 years. 16- to 19-year-olds were almost 3 times as likely to become a victim of violence as people aged 30 to 39 in the mid-1990s. But violence against this group has declined rapidly since then: while they continue to be the group that is most likely to be victim of violence with 7.2% annual victimization in 2020, this used to be over 28% in the mid-1990s. While risk of violence has declined for all the ages under 40, the shift has been the largest for the younger groups.
Relatively few people over 50 become victims of violence compared to younger age groups in each time period. However, closer inspection reveals there is a significant increase in the risks of violence among the older age groups (60-69 and 70 and older) since the late 1990s, and particularly since 2015.
Overall, the age profile of victims has shifted massively over the decades, there is now much less variation in rates between age groups.
Figure 2 Prevalence of violence (including violent crime, threats, robberies, and sexual violence) by age group, 1982 to 2020.
Source: Authors’ analysis using CSEW/BCS data from 1982 to 2019/2020.
Example 2: Investigating smaller groups: Differences in wellbeing impact between intimate partner perpetrators
Our integrated crime survey dataset allows for the study of minority groups that are relatively small or forms of violence that are not often reported.
For example, only by combining twenty years of the crime survey (2001 to 2020) do we have sufficient sample size to study the impact physical intimate partner violence has on wellbeing and health, and how it differs between various types of intimate partner perpetrator.
Firstly, it is important to note that physical violence by any type of intimate partner has a higher risk of high emotional impact (Figure 3a) and a higher risk of injury (Figure 3b) than violence by other types of perpetrators.
Figure 3a below shows that the emotional impact reported by female victims is higher when the violence was committed by a current or former spouse/partner compared to if it was done by a current or former boy/girlfriend. Women were more likely to say they were ‘very much’ affected by the violence when it was committed by a current or former spouse/partner. It could be that the proximity of spousal relationships, which are often cohabitating, and their average longer duration account for some of the greater report impact. However, in contrast to emotional impact, figure 3b (below) shows that women are more likely to get an injury(ies) by violence by current spouses than by former spouses.
Overall, this study highlighted that physical violence by an intimate partner has a more severe wellbeing and health impact than violence by others, but also the need to differentiate intimate partner violence and abuse by not only the type of violence/abuse but also the type of intimate partner.
Figure 3 Estimated emotional wellbeing and risk of injuries for women following physical intimate partner violence, differences between intimate partner perpetrators.
a) Respondent’s reported emotional impact (showing the highest category).
b) Respondent’s reported physical health impact (showing the risk of injury)
Source: Authors’ analysis using CSEW/BCS data from 2001 to 2019/2020.
Notes: Respondent’s self-assessed emotional impact measured in four categories: not impacted, little impact, quite a lot, very much impacted. Respondent’s self-assessed risk of injuries is measured in three categories: no force was used, force was used but no injury was sustained, force was used that led to an injury. Figures are based on average marginal effects following ordered logit models controlling for key (socio)demographics. Significance was tested in additional models.
What the merger code does and doesn’t do
The Stata code enables users to merge the raw CSEW/BCS datasets. Consequently, at the moment, this code does not harmonize variables that change (slightly) over different years. Considering the measurement of many variables changes over the years, the users of this combined file need to make their own decisions on what operationalisations work best for their research and for the years they use.
Most of the time new variable names are used when a new measurement is used. However, for a few variables, different measurements seem to be used in different years, but they have the same variable name (for instance for household income variables such as tothhin2). In the current code, these variables are treated as being the same. Therefore, users need to carefully check the variables that they use for the relevant years.
Next, this code does not work in the secure researcher environment as provided by UKDS or ONS because the datasets in these environments have different names and the structure of the folders is different.
Overall, the merger code will save researchers precious time in combining the surveys that they want to use. As we have shown here, combining survey sweeps can benefit the study of trends in victimisation. The code can also be used for studying groups or crimes that are too rare to study using only a single sweep, therefore, this code may provide an incentive for studying marginalised groups and specific crimes, contributing to new insights into victimisation.
Citation for merged code
Blom, Niels (2023). Code for Merging Waves of the Crime Survey of England and Wales and the British Crime Survey, 1982-2020. [Data Collection]. Colchester, Essex: UK Data Service. 10.5255/UKDA-SN-856494
Examples in this blog are from
Blom, N., Obolenskaya, P., Phoenix, J., and Pullerits M. (2023, September 11-13). Differentiating intimate partner violence by perpetrator relationship type. Types of crimes committed and consequences for victims’ health and wellbeing by different types of intimate partner perpetrators [Conference Presentation]. European Conference on Domestic Violence, Reykjavik, Iceland.
Obolenskaya, P. & Blom, N. (2023, September 6-9). The rise, fall and stall of violence in England and Wales: how have risks of violence changed for different groups? [Conference Presentation]. EuroCrim 23rd Annual Conference of the European Society of Criminology, Florence, Italy.
Data reference
Office for National Statistics. Crime Survey for England and Wales, 2001-2002 to 2019-2020 and British Crime Survey 1982 to 2001 [data collections]. UK Data Service SN: 8812, 8608, 8464, 8321, 8140, 7889, 7619, 7422, 7252, 6937, 6627, 6367, 6066, 5755, 5543, 5347, 5324, 5059, 4787.
We invite you to attend State Violence: An online symposium, Thursday 19 October at 13.00 BST. This symposium brings together researchers in International Relations to discuss the conceptual development, critical concerns, causes, ethics, and empirical realities of state violence.
This discussion starts from the premise that we do not dedicate enough time in IR to the violence of the state. We ask what this means in global systems and structures, as well as in lived experiences and everyday realities. Themes include legal violence, epistemic violence, colonial violence, digital violence, human rights activism, and affective atmospheres of violence.
We invite you to participate in a thought-provoking discussion that pushes the boundaries of international relations theory. The event will involve a panel of four speakers, each taking a different approach to the theme of state violence. It will be followed by 45 minutes of participatory Q&A where we invite the audience to submit questions and fuel further discussion.
The speakers and chair are:
Leonie Fleischmann – Senior Lecturer in International Politics and Human Rights at City, University of London
Jasmine Gani – Senior Lecturer in International Relations and Co-Director of the Centre for Syrian Studies at the University of St Andrews
Ty Solomon – Professor of International Relations in the school of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Glasgow
Sasikumar Sundaram – Lecturer in International Politics, Foreign Policy and Security Studies at City, University of London
Chair: Alexandria Innes – Senior Lecturer of International Politics and researcher in the Violence and Society Centre at City, University of London and Co-Investigator in the VISION consortium
The symposium is facilitated by the International Ethics Section of the International Studies Association; the Violence and Society Centre at City, University of London; and the Societal Insecurities Research Cluster in International Politics at City, University of London.
We are pleased to provide the presentations from our 2nd annual conference held 21 September 2023 at Mary Ward House in London.
The theme was Responding to violence across the life course. Sessions included presentations on childhood and teenage years; working life, poverty & economic impacts; older years; and social inclusion in policy and research. The conference concluded with a panel discussion on violence and complex systems.
Seventy-seven academics, central and local government officials, practitioners, and voluntary and community sector organisations attended from a range of health and crime / justice disciplines.
Please feel free to download the presentations below. Each session is one download.
Photo caption: Dr Ladan Hashemi, Senior Research Fellow at VISION, answers a question after her presentation, ‘Adverse Childhood Experiences and Childhood Obesity: Exploring Potential Mediating and Moderating Factors’
Sally will use a life-course approach to understanding women’s mental health and wellbeing at work, including the impact of the psychosocial working environment, bullying and harassment at work, and what support and signposting employers can offer in relation to domestic violence.
The call for proposals for the Adolescent Domestic Abuse conference on 18 April 2024, is now closed.
The event is free to attend, and registration will open in early 2024. For any questions or comments about the upcoming conference in the meantime, please contact Ruth Weir at ruth.weir@city.ac.uk or VISION_Management_Team@city.ac.uk.
We invited proposals for conference presentations and welcome applications from researchers, academics, practitioners, and policy makers.
Adolescent domestic abuse, which includes physical, emotional, and/or sexual abuse that occurs between young people who are, or were, dating, is often overlooked in research, policy and practice. The current definition of domestic abuse leaves those in teenage relationships falling into the gap between child protection procedures and adult-focused domestic abuse policy (Barrow-Grint et al, 2022).
The Crime Survey for England and Wales finds that women aged 16 to 19 are more likely to experience domestic abuse than any other age group (ONS, 2020), but despite the prevalence, women in this age group are less likely to be referred to support services (SafeLives, 2017). The Domestic Abuse Act 2021 brought in new legislation that saw children who live in a home where domestic abuse takes place recognised for the first time as victims in their own right. The Act also lowered the minimum age for a person to be classified as a victim of domestic abuse from 18 to 16 years.
However, research from SafeLives found that, on average, experiencing abusive behaviour from a partner begins at age 14 or 15, leaving a gap in recognition and support for those under the age of 16 (SafeLives, 2017). Research among those aged 11-16 in Wales found a range of mental health and social impacts associated with experiencing domestic abuse, including teenage pregnancy, self-harm and violent behaviour (Young et al, 2021).
These challenges are echoed by those trying to police domestic abuse, with the Assistant Chief Constable of Thames Valley Police questioning whether the age at which domestic abuse is recognised in law and practice for victims and perpetrators should be lowered to 13.
We acknowledge this is a complex and contested question that needs significant research and nuanced consideration from many angles. For example, consideration of intersectional issues such as the criminalisation of young people and the lack of alternatives to custody currently available to those who use harmful or abusive behaviours, as well as issues pertaining to cultural backgrounds.
Proposals for single presentations on topics relating to adolescent domestic abuse were encouraged to include – but not limited to – the following topics:
• Empirical evidence on victimisation and/or perpetration of adolescent domestic abuse
• Evidence on different approaches, theories or practices in response to adolescent domestic abuse
• Policy or practice initiatives, developments or frameworks (including legal) regarding adolescent domestic abuse
The conference is organised and hosted by the following:
Dr Annie Bunce, VISION Research Fellow, was awarded Best Oral Presentation at the Lancet Public Health Science conference in London this November. She presented on the Prevalence, nature and associations of workplace bullying and harassment with mental health conditions in England: a cross-sectional probability sample survey.
Annie’s research, conducted with VISION colleagues Ladan Hashemi, Sally McManus, and others, presents the first nationally representative findings on the prevalence of workplace bullying and harassment in England for over a decade. Annie analysed data from the 2014 Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey (APMS) to demonstrate: the prevalence of workplace bullying and harassment (WBH) in the working population in England; the nature of WBH experienced, who it was perpetrated by and the types of behaviour it involved; and associations between the experience of WBH and indicators of adverse mental health.
The study is unique in that the APMS makes robust assessments of mental health – operationalising diagnostic criteria – which provides an accurate assessment of clinical need. Implications for employers, policymakers, health services and researchers are outlined.
We’re delighted that one of VISION’s core researchers, Dr Anastasia Fadeeva, chaired a symposium at the upcoming European Public Health Association (EUPHA) conference in November in Dublin.
The workshop, Responding to violence and abuse across the life-course, presented a range of analyses – drawing on data from New Zealand, Germany and the UK – that addressed the ways in which violence and abuse manifest at different life stages, including in childhood, among working-age adults, and in later life.
The presentations highlighted differences across the life course, as well as commonalities. They demonstrated the long-term, even life long, shadow that violence and abuse can cast over people’s health, and provided evidence of the extensive costs for society. Health impacts were shown to be broad, not only anxiety and depression, but substance dependence, chronic physical health conditions, and related health risks such as obesity.
This symposium comprised four presentations that each considered violence and abuse prevalent at a particular stage of life, and provided evidence to inform the sensitive tailoring of responses from and for families, schools, health and social services, workplace human resource employees, and care and residential homes.
We are pleased to announce a new, one-year partnership with the Violence, Abuse and Mental Health Network (VAMHN).
VAMHN is a network of individuals and organisations aiming to reduce the prevalence of mental health problems by addressing associated violence and abuse, particularly domestic and sexual violence.
The interdisciplinary cross-sector network brings together and supports research by experts from a range of disciplines, sectors, and backgrounds – some with lived experience, others with expertise from the work that they do, and survivor researchers with both.
VAMHN’s work aligns with our own goals of improving measurement of violence and better use of data to prevent and mitigate the harm that violence causes to health and wellbeing.
VAMHN has done sterling work engaging with survivors of violence in co-producing research and creating a Lived Experience (LE) Advisory Group. They will support VISION as we build and expand on LE engagement across our project.
