ABSTRACT
Although the criminal law provides a range of offences that can be prosecuted in the domestic violence context, the willingness of the criminal justice agencies to effectively utilise these offences has long been questioned. Early research into the experiences of women trying to access the protection of the criminal law suggested that the police and the courts were reluctant to engage with them and take their complaints seriously. The bulk of the early research was on the police response to domestic violence. This is unsurprising given that they are the gatekeepers to the criminal justice system and thus a key point in the attrition process. If the case does not make it past the police decision-making filter then it never enters the domain of the courts where there is the potential for greater public scrutiny of the decision making. The early studies of police decision-making in domestic violence cases therefore provide a benchmark for assessing how far the criminal justice agencies have come in improving their response to domestic violence. New players such as the Crown Prosecution Service, which entered onto the scene in the mid1980s, have been subjected to critical scrutiny against a backdrop that suggested that the system was failing to meet the need of victims of domestic violence and hold perpetrators to account. This chapter will trace the evolution of the criminal justice response to domestic violence from the days when it was regarded as essentially a non-criminal matter to recent years when the imperative has been to communicate that domestic violence is taken seriously by the criminal justice system and is not a purely private or civil matter.
