The Home Secretary recently announced that she intends to introduce a new offence of domestic abuse covering "coercive and controlling behaviour" within intimate and family relationships. The new provision, to be introduced as an amendment to the Serious Crimes Act, will attract a maximum sentence of five years imprisonment, a fine, or both. The stated reasons for this are to plug a gap in existing criminal laws and to ensure that frontline professionals, including the police, have an improved understanding of "the subtleties of abusive intimate relationships". The announcement follows a consultation last summer, in which 85 per cent of respondents agreed that the existing legal framework is not sufficient to protect victims of domestic violence, and 55 per cent agreed that this behaviour should be criminalised.
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