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.”