The role of the police in administrative data collection on intimate partner violence
Intimate partner violence is a recurrent form of violence affecting women in the European Union. Efforts to combat this form of violence require an understanding of its scale and nature through reliable, systematic and comparable data. Data is necessary to measure the prevalence and consequences of such violence, to monitor state responses to it and to evaluate policies combating it.
The requirement for high quality administrative data is also in line with Member States' international commitments to fight violence
against women, as defined in Directive 2012/29/EU (the Victim‘s Rights Directive) and the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence (the Istanbul Convention).
The police play a crucial role in collecting data in the early stages of the criminal justice process. Accurate police data is essential for grasping the total number of intimate partner violence incidents reported, even if some of these are not recognised as crimes.