ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the responses of the criminal justice system in Northern Ireland to domestic abuse prior to 2020. Political violence was a part of life in Northern Ireland for around 30 years from the late 1960s until the late 1990s, and the ‘Troubles’ certainly impacted upon responses to domestic abuse. However, the focus of the chapter is on analysing much more recent responses of the criminal justice system to domestic abuse, specifically during the decade from around 2010 until 2019. During this decade, several reports were issued by Criminal Justice Inspection Northern Ireland (CJINI) which focused on the responses of the criminal justice system to domestic abuse, and these reports are discussed in this chapter. In 2016 the Department of Justice carried out a public consultation on domestic abuse which included the question of whether a specific offence capturing coercive and controlling behaviour should be enacted, and also encompassed the issue of whether a domestic violence disclosure scheme should be developed and implemented in Northern Ireland. The subsequent introduction in 2018 of the Domestic Violence and Abuse Disclosure Scheme constituted an important development which is examined in this chapter.
