Detective Superintendent Lindsay Fisher, Head of the PSNI’s Public Protection Branch welcomed the publication of the Department of Justice’s Domestic and Sexual Abuse Strategy saying:
“We welcome the publication of this strategy today as a joint commitment and another milestone in our journey to transforming domestic and sexual abuse victims’ experiences of the criminal justice system and specialist support across Northern Ireland.
“From report to outcome, we are determined to continuing to improve our service and provide even greater protection for families, including children, while bringing more offenders to justice.
“These crimes make up 22% of all crimes reported to us and they are devastating on victims’ lives, having a long-lasting impact.
“The reality in Northern Ireland is that we are seeing too many repeat offences; repeat victims and offenders. We hope that this strategy provides us with the necessary tools and resources to begin to explore viable intervention and rehabilitation options to help tackle this.
“We have made significant progress in our learning, with the introduction of Domestic Homicide reviews and have more tools in our armoury now with new legislation but we still have a ways to go.
“We are behind in our societal approach to getting to the root causes of these crimes. This is why we have welcomed the partnership approach to developing this strategy and hope it is the beginning of Northern Ireland’s journey in robustly tackling them head on.”
The DSA Strategy and three-year action plan can be found in full here - Domestic and Sexual Abuse Strategy and Performance Framework 2024 - 2031 | Department of Health (health-ni.gov.uk)