Calls for domestic abuse homicide reviews in Scotland
Support charities yesterday backed the introduction of all-agency reviews after violent deaths blamed on domestic violence.
Dr Marsha Scott, chief executive of Scottish Women’s Aid, said Scotland should bring in domestic abuse homicide reviews after they were introduced in England and Wales.
She said: “Scotland must design and implement its own domestic homicide review process as part of action to see this picture change.
“Our colleagues in Police Scotland recently released a report on domestic homicides which reminds us that, despite all of our work in Scotland, the number of domestic homicides has remained virtually level.
“All parts of the criminal justice system have a long way to go before what we do reflects what we say about tackling domestic abuse and holding perpetrators to account.
“One of the biggest fault lines is how we communicate with each other across professional boundaries.
“This can be exacerbated when we’re talking about crossing borders or perpetrators moving outside of Scotland.
“There is not one element of our system that can’t be improved for women and children experiencing domestic abuse.”
Co-convenor of the cross-party group on violence against women and girls, Rona Mackay MSP, has been working on what Scotland can learn from other jurisdictions and has been examining the development of multi-agency homicide reviews.
She said: “Key to this will be learning from the practice in other jurisdictions, which have allowed for improvements to be made.”
Scottish Conservative shadow justice secretary Liam Kerr said: “It’s quite clear this evil individual [Highton] escaped with far too soft a sentence in the first place. Had he been given the jail time he deserved, attempts could at least have been made to rehabilitate him, or the prison experience may have deterred him from further violence.
“Instead, he was essentially just released into the world to find his next victim.”
Green Party Justice spokesman John Finnie said: “The fact he was flagged on systems for domestic abuse shows that was accepted by the authorities.”