Domestic Violence, Sexual Assault And Stalking: Findings from The British Crime Survey

Inter-personal violence comprises crimes of domestic violence, sexual assault and stalking. These are important forms of crime and the government is engaged in a major series of policy initiatives in order to deal with them. However, only a small fraction of these cases are reported to the police and recorded by them, and even interview based surveys have difficulty in getting people to disclose such events. This report presents the findings of an innovative computerised self-completion questionnaire included in the British Crime Survey (BCS) which encourages wider reporting of experiences than the main face-to-face part of the BCS. It builds on previous use of this methodology in the BCS, and provides the most reliable findings to date on the extent and nature of inter-personal violence in England and Wales.