Understanding Coercive Control Within and Beyond the Domestic Environment

In England and Wales, 2015, the Serious Crime Act (section 76) implemented the criminalisation of controlling or coercive behaviour, closing a gap in the law around ‘patterns of abuse’ in intimate partner or family relationships. Coercive control is at the heart of most intimate partner/domestic abuse, however, conviction rates have remained low. This study therefore investigates why evidencing/seeking support for coercive-controlling offences remains a challenge. Founded upon feminist standpoint epistemology, the study was conducted via 20 semi-structured interviews: ten with survivors of coercive control; one with the parent of a 12-year-old survivor; nine with practitioners/professionals working with victim-survivors and perpetrators of coercive control. Experiences explored in these interviews are analysed using thematic methods, providing rich insights into coercive control and building on how theory/practice can take the concept of coercive control forward.

My research shows the definition of coercive control informing UK policy/service intervention is limited in its confinement to the domestic. Dominant conceptualisations fail to capture victim-survivors’ experiences of coercive control that extend, structurally and/or systemically, beyond the domestic, across services intended to help, and enabling perpetrators to continue offending. This problem is also identified in relation to systematic patterns of abuse, perpetrated within workplaces, communities, and families, demonstrating how coercive control occurs both interpersonally and collectively: within and beyond the domestic on a continuum extending into organisational/institutional help-seeking contexts. My research addresses three key areas of coercive control in policy and practice: difficulties evidencing coercive control by criminal justice and support systems; how private/interpersonal and public/social/institutional violence intersect in coercive control; coercive control operating on a continuum. I argue existing conceptualisations and policy practices struggle to recognise and respond to the complex spectrum of coercive control; therefore proposing a framing not limited to domestic/interpersonal but operating on a continuum between private/public, individual/collective, domestic/institutional, meaningfully extending beyond the domestic.