Met Police chief warns of escalating male violence

The scale of male violence against women in England and Wales is “an inconvenient truth” that goes way beyond the capacity of the criminal justice system to solve, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley has told the London Policing Board.

Research carried out for the National Police Chief’s Council shows that one in 10 women in England and Wales are victims of male violence. With up to four million mainly male perpetrators, this means as many as one man in seven may be a risk to women and girls.

“I’ve spoken about needing a counter-terrorism approach,” Rowley said, as he described the “eye-watering numbers” of violent and sexual attacks against women and girls every year, crimes which he also said were “obviously under-reported.”

Figures he gave included:

• 800,000 sexual assaults recorded by police against women each year.
• Over a million reports of domestic violence annually.
• Three quarters of a million men with a sexual interest in children.

The panel was also told that domestic abuse accounts for:

• More than 10 per cent of all 999 calls nationally.
• More than 30 per cent of all violence with injury.
• More than half of all violent offences against women in a relationship.

Rowley said that “the threat that is male predatory violence against women and girls” will require a “whole step up in approach” and a partnership between police, local authorities and the third sector… to scale across prevention, protection and pursuit of offenders.”  

Given what Louisa Rolfe, Met assistant commissioner, described as a “relatively inexperienced first responder workforce,” and the absence of any national strategy across all agencies to reduce offending, whichever party gets into government will need to push for a wholesale reform of resourcing and priorities across public services to stop male violence against half the country’s population.