Improving police investigation of intimate partner sexual violence: challenges and opportunities

This article reviews how police investigate Intimate Partner Sexual Violence (IPSV). IPSV is both domestic abuse and sexual violence. This duality means there is flexibility as to how it is investigated. An empirical study in England and Wales shows that as a result of this duality/flexibility there is significant variability in how IPSV is investigated by police forces. Despite widespread support for taking a specialist approach to investigating sexual offending, not much attention has been given to the best way to configure specialist units. This article explores officers’ perceptions of the challenges of conducting investigations of this type and considers how variability in how IPSV is located may impact the ability of officers to overcome those challenges. We find that forces who locate the investigation of IPSV with specialist domestic abuse officers appear more likely to be able to overcome the challenges associated with this type of offending, due to more consistent understanding of the context of coercive control in which it typically occurs.