Actual insights from a dreary e-learning ‘course’ on domestic abuse.
Once upon a time, I had to sit through an e-learning course on domestic abuse.
The course banged on about specific groups being at increased risk. At this point my antennae were twitching because I’m always tuned in to the societal harms caused by ‘be nice’, ‘least restrictive policies’ and Princess Tony’s adoption of the ECHR.
Btw ‘At increased risk’ is a bullshit woke social science term that doesn’t differentiate between victim and perp. In this moral universe a person may be at increased risk of receiving domestic violence and at increased risk of dishing it out. I will be more honest and specify which I’m talking about. Some of the listed, at-risk, groups include LGBTQ+, youth, drug and alcohol abuse, the catch-all term ‘mental health issues,’ people (usually women), living in households with low income plus a perpetrator who has previously committed criminal acts and/or abuse. Who’d have thought it? Nothing predicts like past behaviour.
Let’s take a closer look at a few.
1. Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity. The course offers this bland, vague, unsupported claim.
‘LGBTQ+ survivors often present with higher levels of risk due to the presence of complex needs, such as mental health problems, substance misuse and self-harm.’ Perhaps poorly phrased but in MHS we describe people who’ve survived sexual abuse as ‘survivors’ and encourage that positive and resilient mindset. We don’t describe lesbians and gays as ‘survivors’ because there’s nothing to survive. It’s now part of normal life, isn’t it? Not inherently abusive.
NB the course does not mention a word about the through-the-roof rates of lesbian DV.
2. Low Income. ‘Women who lived in households earning less than £10K were more than four x as likely (14.3%) to have experienced partner abuse in the last 12 months than women living in households with incomes of £50K or more (3.3%)’
Low income is a proxy, and an lazy/easy one at that, for low educational achievement, single parenthood, addiction, poor impulse control, poor executive function, low birthweight and other deprived childhood sequelae, inability to delay gratification, being stuck in a cycle of deprivation, experiencing or witnessing domestic violence or abuse as a child, anomie, absence of strong, reliable adult male role models and protectors. Those markers in turn are predictive of many negative outcomes, obesity, unemployment, longstanding forensic histories, addictions and mental disorders, early pregnancy, mortality rates, general failure at life and so on. Look at what the sanitised ‘course’ didn’t say. Low achieving women who have landed in the tar-pit of single parenthood, low income and prospects (see the immense body of work on Fragile Families) attract low quality, unreliable men who don’t stick around and present a greater risk of knocking them about. In turn, they produce children who are stuck with all those disadvantages and don’t rise out of them.
Call me an unreconstructed horrid person but wouldn’t the victims of domestic violence (in fact everyone in Britain) benefit from well written policies and laws aimed at targeting and helping these people BEFORE they turn into perpetual generators of chaos and disaster? As for those who’ve already got there, don’t we need services, therapy, laws and punishments that don’t just nicely suggest they change their ways but insist upon it. Carrot and stick.
Working taxpayers, I’m sorry to have to be the one to break it to you, but you lose. Scrotes receive ECHR and ‘least restrictive’ protection. They must consent to any intervention aimed at controlling their criminality. You get to pay for it.
3. Alcohol and Substance Misuse.
Here’s the blurb ‘Evidence shows a strong association between domestic abuse and drug and alcohol use. Studies show links between substance use and both perpetration and victimisation of domestic abuse.’ You don’t say, Sherlock.
There have always been addicts and alcoholics. But both the numbers and harms have been shooting up. Some drivers include higher strength alcohol as compared to yesteryear, numerous new types of synthetic drugs, decades of weak MOJ action, organised crime re-investing their money in an obvious winner, policies written by fuzzy-headed liberal women (obviously) and the disastrous effects of neoliberal market reforms to public services, including ours. Professionals working in DOA and addictions could write you whole lists of ideas they have to more effectively help people. But I’ll continue as I’ve started and focus only on the judgemental and punitive approach to reducing the harms addicts cause (and suffer).
My approach would be risk based, rights with responsibilities, and emphasis on taking personal responsibility for change. Doing all that would get the patient the carrot – i.e a lot of credit and goodwill. Denial and blaming others would get the stick.
It would have a snowball in hell’s chance of success unless Britain took firm, military and legal action to massively reducing supply and availability. How about a lot of draconian confiscation and charging the full cost of harm reparations. While we’re at it, let’s do something about legal firms enriching themselves by enabling the criminals who are turning of our country into a narco-state. Albania and Mexico know that once you’re a narco-state, you never get your country back. Drugs have got to be treated, not as a harmless bit of fun, but the social and national cancer it has now become. That cancer must be cut out with extreme prejudice. Maybe the low THC Red Leb back in the 70s really was a harmless bit of fun but the past is another country.
And we’d have to insist on a canyon sized separation between addiction, anti-social pissed up criminality and genuine mental illness. It’s impossible under the current regime of absolution set up by our courageous managers. I can’t tell you how many mental nurses have been injured by gang associated scrotes off their heads on meth who get into mental hospitals under protocols written to treat them as though they were genuinely ill and get out again two days later with a get out of jail free card for their crimes. It doesn’t have to be this way.
Ages ago, probably as a result of a UN or WHO edict our national managers signed up to unthinkingly obey, our DOA services universally adopted a ‘harm-reduction’ approach. All services are required to adopt this set of values. Non-judgementalism, no longer insisting on abstinence as the goal etc. That’s every patient/client, no exceptions. No innovation, no local centre of excellence. No. But you do get stifling uniformity, one size fits all and slavish adherence to policies written by frauds hiding in ivory towers. You are paying for that. Some addicts/patients/clients do benefit from a harm-reduction approach. At the same time, victims, family members, local shops, people walking home late at night and the handbags of little old ladies experience a harm-maximising effect. Ethically, what would be wrong with making aggressive drunks, addicts who shoplift, HIV+ addicts, ASPDs, anyone arrested (convicted is too much to hope for) for acquisitive, drug-driven crime or drug and drink induced violence being required by law to never touch another drop and pay heavy, painful fines when they fall off. Fines they must pay off with work; hard, physical work, outdoors all day long in all seasons weather on remote farms many miles away from the nearest road. That would, among other benefits to the country, give them skin in the game.
Drunk tanks are unworkable in Britain because once someone is locked up they become ‘vulnerable’ and rafts of regulations make the police officer responsible for the drunk’s safety. It doesn’t have to be that way. The drunk didn’t have to get in that state. It’s their responsibility. Try this idea for size. A drunk tank has a bed, toilet and tap, and a copper or RMN checking in every so often. The alkie is being protected – from hypothermia, being robbed, raped, beaten up, falling in the canal and so on. You could lock their wallet and phone in a safe and give it back in the morning. You could offer toast and tea and a referral to your local DOA service. Rinse and repeat. If they attack you, and this is where the ridiculous over-regulation makes it a damned if you do or don’t Catch-22 for professionals, you must have the facility to a) lock them up, skip the toast and b) refuse them entry tomorrow night.
As I said, unworkable.
When I become Emperor, you will be invited to jeer and throw rotten vegetables at Cherie and Tony, living under a bridge after every penny they ‘earned’ from ECHR legislation has been confiscated. (Until then, you are paying for this multi-tier injustice) Excuse me, I’m starting to unduly seethe. This post is quite long enough. The next one moves onto 4. ‘Mental health issues’ and Clare’s Law.
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