Challenges for police in safety planning and risk management for adults victims and children living with domestic violence: Barriers and promising practices
Abstract
This dissertation focused on how police services from across Ontario are employing safety planning processes and procedures with adult victims and children living with domestic violence and the effectiveness of adopting risk management strategies to reduce the risk of potential future violence by the offender. Police response in Ontario has been guided by procedures and processes that have been manualized since the year 2000 to manage and investigate offences of this nature. Furthermore, challenges and barriers to providing effective safety planning and risk management strategies were examined along with best practices that police services are incorporating to ensure overall victim safety. To gain insight into existing practices for police services, interviews were conducted and analyzed with 12 senior police officers who specialize in domestic violence investigations. The participants were from various jurisdictions from across Ontario. The interviews were part of a national research grant examining the response of key informants from different professions and sectors dealing with domestic violence risk assessment, risk management and safety planning.
Overall, the findings highlight police have a critical role to play in the overall safety and wellbeing of victims of domestic violence and their children. The findings from this study suggest that there is an inconsistent approach to safety planning across the police services who participated. Furthermore, there is a reluctance for police to directly engage children exposed to domestic violence especially in terms of offering safety planning. In addition, risk management strategies targeted at the perpetrator of domestic violence was lacking amongst most of the police services who participated as many were victim-centered and not offender-centered in their
approach to managing risk to the victim.