FiLiA Survey Report on Women’s Confidence in Policing
In 2020, FiLiA conducted a survey of women, with the aim to find out how confident a snapshot of the female population in the UK feels in the police force and its ability to protect women, not just from male violence but also from harassment and abuse directed at women because of their sex.
The overwhelming conclusions of the survey are that women do not feel confident in the police.
Lack of confidence in the police has serious repercussions for women. A population which lacks confidence and trust in the police will be reluctant to engage with them. Of the women surveyed, more than half had not reported VAWG crimes or incidents against them.
When women do not report crimes or incidents against them because they have no faith that the police will be fair or effective at dealing with them, it leads to a false picture that fewer crimes are taking place.
When fewer crimes are believed to have taken place than in fact have, it is easy for the authorities to become complacent about crime numbers. This survey suggests that there are far more crimes of VAWG committed than are reported.
The results demonstrate that where women have a positive experience of reporting crime, they are much more likely to trust the police. Where that experience is negative, trust and confidence plummet.
The police forces in the UK need to work with women to ensure that women's trust and confidence in the police is improved. The primary way to increase women's confidence in the police is to ensure that strenuous efforts are made to support women and that abuse of women, on- or off-line, is taken seriously and suspects pursued. If a prosecution is not possible, a coherent explanation must be provided so that women understand that they are not being ignored due to their sex.