Yes, Parole is very good and the risk factors in all those cases are much the same. Unresolved childhood traumas, leading to difficulty controlling your emotions, leading to poor coping strategies, which then make their behavior worse. We haven't seen any SO on the program yet, but hopefully there will be one later in the series.

'Attitude towards women' can't be on the list because what if the DA perpetrator is a female? Where do same-sex couples come into DA? So you would have to write on the list 'attitude toward other people' and that's just too vague to have any meaning and very often there's long and parochial stories into the 'why' things happen regardless of gender/orientation etc. This is why what is written in law will be so different to all of these labels that are thrown around and what the public 'thinks' the laws are.

Parole is a very interesting watch on BBC 2 by the way.

=====
Fighting or Accepting - its difficult to know which is right and when.

(PDF) Contact Sexual Offending by Men With Online Sexual Offenses (researchgate.net)

This is one of the most commonly referred to studies.
"4.6% of online offenders committed a new sexual offense of some kind during a 1.5- to 6-year follow-up; 2.0% committed a contact sexual offense and 3.4% committed a new child pornography offense"

Going slightly off track and talking of re-offending predictions, i think youi've mentioned more than once about SO re-offending predictions/rates being less than 5%?? Do you have a link you could share to any of this data and or articles please?

I did a bit of reading around this and it turns out there are already detailed risk assessments for predicting domestic violence. One of the more interesting ones is cruelty to animals. Apparently if someone is violent towards the family pet, then they are more likely to be violent to their partner.

But what was not on the list of risk factors, was hostile attitudes to women. That is not recognised as a risk factor for domestic violence, even though it is a risk factor for sexual offending.

You're right, Labour wouldn't be softer, but that's not the only alternative. One of the fascinating things that Tories have been doing is presenting binary-style: 'Tory option versus a rubbish option' to the public, when there are actually many other options. They want to lead your mind to think "you don't want this other thing, so pick our thing'. Eg in 2010 Austerity v more debt - there's a multitude of options in between the two and it turns out (too late) both were the wrong way to deal with the economy in that moment. Mask or no mask in the pandemic - the answer really was 'mask if you like' because both for and against sides just didn't have any concrete info, but everyone just throws their toys out of the pram in anger which in turn stifles rightminded thinking.
I think we're already seeing an example of this when people aren't being charged with IIOC and instead being put on a Horizon-type course before their life is ruined with convictions. Great for them, too late for us of course. So here the Tories would say 'punish or not punish', when a better alternative is prescript therapy/course.
So that was kind of what I meant when if someone says 'protect women and girls' - the 'binary' alternative becomes 'not protect women and girls' which obviously doesn't work. An actual alternative (or separate conversation altogether) is 'improve men and boys', for example. They're so clever with their manipulative language. I could ramble more but I'll stop there, haha.



=====
Fighting or Accepting - its difficult to know which is right and when.

Some really good talking points there, Mr W. As for Labour being any softer on crime than the Tories, that seems unlikely. They are keen to show they are just as tough and under the last Labour govt, there were 3,600 new offences created, including the SOA 2003, the prison population went up from 60k to 80k, while indeterminate IPP sentences were also introduced under Labour.

There are well established risk factors for domestic violence, such as mental health issues, substance abuse and poverty/unemployment, as well as learned behaviour from growing up in a family where there was domestic violence. But you're right that hostile attitudes to women and even belief in traditional gender roles have come under a lot of scrutiny recently. The more focus there is on this, the less there is on all the other factors, but at the same time, it could act as a gateway to uncovering some of the other things that are going on in that persons life. I've mentioned before how peoples internet histories are being used as a pre crime tool, to read peoples minds and predict their future behaviour. Sometimes that can work, but it could also lead to a lot of misunderstandings and to people being labelled as risky, when they aren't.

I have little time for Suella Braverman and her speeches that just use Daily Mail lingo. If they're all booted out at the next election, I think all of this will be pulled back. Like you say, all of their new legislation and rules put so much more pressure on the services they've spent the last decade cutting, it makes no sense. Policing is being pushed away from crime and more towards control.

The police will be required to treat violence against women and girls as a "national threat".This means it should be given the same priority as serious organised crime, terrorism and child abuse.

Taking a slight step back and looking at the bigger picture, what I've found interesting is they think phraseology of 'women and girls' means they have carte blanche to do whatever they want because it's difficult to publicly argue against. Why would you argue against it? Well, a quarter of victims are men and that quarter are only the ones who report it, but as the discussion is about women and girls, do male victims not matter? Remember, women are more likely to abuse through psychological means rather than physical, much trickier to prove in court.
But what's worse, if men start to feel disenfranchised and excluded they may lose their way, enter Plymouth shooter Jake Davison. The "incel" and misogynistic culture is pathetic but it's growing and it's no accident. You only have to look at the rise of Andrew Tate to see that *some* "men and boys", to loosely coin the phrase, are indeed feeling they're disenfranchised and excluded and are looking in the wrong places for how to 'be a man'. So boys are already being attacked for following Tate (and even brainwashed enough to stick up for him) but you must ask how they got there in the first place! A better response would be to show them positive role models and ENCOURAGE positive ways they can live and be included in society. Because oh look, as soon as they get it wrong once, it's a good job there are all these oppressive systems in place for them to be monitored within an inch of their life. It's a long game and it's scary. The signs are obvious, so where is all the talk of positive moves? Ironically, solving that will do far more for 'women and girls'.

(An interesting line further down that article: "And a digital tool to help police officers identify likely perpetrators - even those without convictions - will be developed." Another virtue signal to erode rights to a private life. Define "likely" please. If a boy calls a girl a bitch on Twitter, what will "the tool" make of him forever more?) Crazy world we live in right now.

=====
Fighting or Accepting - its difficult to know which is right and when.

On the subject of false accusations, there is another element to this story, which is that the police are supposedly going to develop a digital tool that can identify 'potential' domestic abusers, including those without convictions. So a suspicion or an accusation would be enough.

Hi and thanks for this info and though I agree abusers should be punished, I do wonder how many will have false/revenge or loosely based accusations will be made as in the same manner that can happen now concerning sexual offences.

Looking at the possible positives, I wonder if in time that due to the workload we will see low risk ex-offenders being assessed and be allowed to come off a life time sentence on the SOR at an earlier stage than the present 15yr point.
I may be naive but with society and media "baying for the blood of every SO" at the conviction point, and in my opinion improper sentences are/can be issued, and so at a more reasonable later date e.g. 10 yr if not less,  a low risk person can be removed from the SOR at the instigation at the Police; without the need for Court and so media attention!

One always hopes but then the law is the law and as the topic of your post is not even law yet, I can hope.




Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope is for tomorrow else what is left if you remove a mans hope.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-64701020

This article confirms something that has been talked about for a while. It will only apply to those with sentences of over 12 months but that will still be a lot of people. The interesting thing is that they appear to have been put on the register immediately, before the law has been changed.

"While the process to change the law takes place, such offenders will be recorded on the Violent and Sex Offender Register so they "don't fall through the cracks", the government said."

I'm not sure how this is possible, without legislation. On gov.uk, it says this:

"While we are pursuing this legislation, police and the probation service will start work immediately to ensure that from now offenders sentenced to a year or more for controlling and coercive behaviour are recorded on the violent and sex offender register, so that they don’t fall through the cracks."

It suggests that there is going to be a record created on the Visor computer system for them, but not that they will receive regular visits from police, like SO do, because that would require changing the 2003 act. There is also mention of introducing civil orders, which would force them to declare a change in name or address. That is different from SO, who are required to notify police under the law, not because of their SHPO.

The other thing is that when the law is changed, they will be automatically be monitored under MAPPA.  At the moment this only happens if the police want to use MAPPA. In future, they won't have a choice. When this occurs, that is presumably when the home visits will begin. The numbers currently on MAPPA are about 80k, with about 70k of those being SO.

With around 2.4 million domestic abuse cases each year, we should see the MAPPA numbers double quite quickly, putting enormous strain on police resources and perhaps leading to less frequent visits for low risk SO.