Member

Honour-based abuse is precisely the kind of crime where the pattern is the risk. If the pattern is not recorded, the risk is then invisible. The College of Policing emphasises that victims of honour-based abuse are too frightened to speak openly, may minimise what is happening, may be accompanied by family members who answer questions for them and may be monitored, controlled or threatened. That makes accurate recording even more essential. When a victim cannot safely tell the full story, the system must be able to piece it together from fragments, but that is impossible if those fragments are not recorded in a consistent and recognised way.