Arrests for controlling or coercive behaviour (FOI)

Request

Could you tell me:

A

How many people have been arrested under for 'Controlling or Coercive Behaviour' in Jersey? Could you break this down by year and the gender of the person arrested?

B

Also, can you provide a breakdown of the outcomes of the arrests set out 'A' above (charged, cautioned, no further action and so on), for each of the years.

Response

A and B

There is no offence in common law or Statute law in Jersey of Controlling or Coercive behaviour.

Whilst Jersey recognises and has adopted the UK definition of Domestic abuse, a definition that includes an acknowledgement and description of controlling and coercive behaviour, the Island does not currently have an equivalent legislative framework that includes such standalone offences.

Any incident reported to the States of Jersey Police assessed to be of a domestic abuse or violence nature will be flagged as such and investigated within a multi-agency environment. Those assessed to be of a high risk will be automatically referred to the Independent Domestic Violence Advisory Service and all domestic abuse cases reported to the States of Jersey Police will be investigated as fully as possible, the majority of which relate to offences such as common assault, grave and criminal assault, malicious damage and disorderly conduct including harassment.

Domestic Abuse reports currently (2018 year-end) account for 14% of all reported crime in the Island.

To research all the cases of Domestic Violence to establish if controlling or coercive behaviour was a feature, to note the gender of each detainee and the outcome of each case, would take longer than the time permitted to complete Freedom of Information responses.

Article applied

Article 16 A scheduled public authority may refuse to supply information if cost excessive

(1) A scheduled public authority that has been requested to supply information may refuse to supply the information if it estimates that the cost of doing so would exceed an amount determined in the manner prescribed by Regulations.

Regulation 2 (1) of the Freedom of Information (Costs) (Jersey) Regulations 2014 allows an authority to refuse a request for information where the estimated cost of dealing with the request would exceed the specified amount of the cost limit of £500. This is the estimated cost of one person spending 12.5 working hours in determining whether the department holds the information, locating, retrieving and extracting the information.