Helping women and girls to feel safe and be safe
In December 2021 the National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC) published Year 1 of a three-year national framework setting out their approach to policing violence against women and girls.
We welcomed and fully support the national framework.
Violence against women and girls continues to take place and the harm caused to all survivors, their families and society is significant.
North Yorkshire Police has already adopted 'violence against women and girls' as a strategic priority and recognised misogyny as a hate crime. We have a raft of initiatives, internal and external, which demonstrate our commitment to develop our staff and to investigate, bring offenders to justice and safeguard victims.
We know that we need to do more to eliminate violence against women and girls. To remove the harm that blights our society.
We have the power, responsibility and opportunity to prevent and to reduce harm. Through this strategy we set out our approach to ensuring every woman and girl in North Yorkshire feels safe and is safe. We are restating our commitment to delivering against he areas of focus set out by the NPCC and how we will go further to demonstrate that 'We care'.
Eliminating violence against women and girls will require a collaborative solution because it is a societal problem. We are committed to making the difference that the public, especially women and girls, and our partners, expect from us as their police service.
Our strategy
- We will demonstrate how we are meeting the overarching objectives of the NPCC framework
- We will be public facing, to ensure that:
- the public are aware of the work that we are doing
- women and girls are consulted on how we develop and deliver our services
- we know that what we are doing is improving the safety of women and girls
- those who are unwilling to report their fears or experience of crime to the police can still access our services through third party support
- We will continue to develop effective working relationships with our partners and relevant charities in this sector to better support women and girls to help them to feel safe and be safe
- We will develop our culture to provide an exemplary work environment that demonstrates the best of professional policing standards
Working with our Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner we will establish a systematic approach to surveying the public and tracking the level of public confidence and trust in North Yorkshire Police.
Definition of Violence against Women and Girls, July 2021, HM Government:
The term ‘violence against women and girls’ refers to acts of violence or abuse that we know disproportionately affect women and girls. Crimes and behaviour covered by this term include rape and other sexual offences, domestic abuse, stalking, ‘honour’-based abuse (including female genital mutilation forced marriage, and ‘honour’ killings), as well as many others, including offences committed online. While we use the term ‘violence against women and girls’, throughout this Strategy, this refers to all victims of any of these offences.
Download the 2023 to 2024 strategy
Our approach
We will take action to:
- Listen to the experience of survivors of violence against women and girls and learn from their experience, especially their experience of the Criminal Justice process
- Continue developing our approach to prevention and early intervention to prevent harm and abuse from occurring
- Demonstrate that we are an open and transparent service
- Better inform the public of the work that we do on their behalf to prevent harm in their communities
- Develop the opportunities for independent scrutiny through our Independent Advisory Groups
- Develop our approach to public engagement through neighbourhood policing
We will take action to:
- Ensure better sharing of information with partners to deliver the right support by the most appropriate service
- Develop a trauma-informed and victim-focused approach within our workforce
- Exploit every opportunity to manage Registered Sex Offenders and Violent Offenders
- Train our workforce to recognize ‘gateway’ offences and to establish early intervention opportunities
We will take action to:
- Identify and target unsafe online spaces
- Develop closer, and more effective, working relationships with our partners and charities
- Promote StreetSafe to help focus our efforts on areas where women and girls feel unsafe
- Develop problem-solving plans to tackle high-risk areas / environments