I am now an officer on the APPG on Perpetrators of Domestic Abuse

This week I was elected as an officer to the APPG on Perpetrators of Domestic Abuse – a cross-party parliamentary group that is looking at tackling violence against women and girls from the point of view of the perpetrators.

Here are some of the questions we’ll be exploring:

• How can we bring offending down?

• How do we manage perpetrators who are still in the community?

• How do we manage those who have been released from prison?

• Does electronic tagging work?

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On Tuesday, we had a session with David Gauke, the independent chair of the sentencing review, which was completed in May this year, and Chris Edwards, the national domestic abuse lead for the Probation Service.

They talked about the implications for electronic monitoring of domestic abuse perpetrators, the need for the probation service to be properly resourced to manage those with tags, and the overwhelm felt by the probation service right now.

The new markers for domestic abuse crimes that will be applied at sentencing were seen as extremely useful in being able to manage those offenders – congratulations again to our Justice lead Josh Babarinde OBE, and wider campaigning from the Lib Dems, in securing this change to the law.