Perceptions of survivors and Police Officers regarding the police response to coercive control

This thesis addressed the perceptions of survivors and professionals on whether Police Officers effectively respond to intimate partner violence from male to female abuse, specifically in relation to coercive controlling behavior, an emerging issue said to underpin domestic violence (DV) (Stark,1995). It is important that Police Officers understand coercive control (CC), to be able to identify and respond to it appropriately. The police response to CC shifted from the violence incident model to the CC model which highlights officer awareness of the signs of CC and the potential behaviors that could amount to a criminal offence (Stark, 2012). By using a feminist perspective and a phenomenological approach to interview survivors, police officers and counselling practitioners, this study sought to answer the overall research questions: (1) What are survivor perspectives on the quality of police responses to coercive control? (2) How do police officers perceive their response to coercive control cases? (3) What are the views of counsellor practitioners of how the police respond to coercive control cases? Utilizing thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006), NVIVO was used to analyze semi-structured interviews that were conducted with participants (police, survivors, and practitioners). The findings suggested that officers lacked awareness on CC, displayed survivor blaming attitudes and prioritized physical violence over other behaviors, resulting in the exclusion of CC behaviors. According to Myhill and Wire (2018) DASH was found to be an ineffective risk assessment for CC which was reflected in the findings and that the DARA risk assessment was effective in assessing CC incidents. This piece identifies the flawed training that officers receive, the toxic culture that resides in the police, the survivor blaming attitudes that are seen in policing, the lack of CC training and the tools that officers use to identify abuse.