City Research Online

Abstract

This article reviews how police investigate Intimate Partner Sexual Violence (IPSV). IPSV is both domestic abuse and sexual violence. This duality means there is flexibility as to how it is investigated. An empirical study in England and Wales shows that as a result of this duality/flexibility there is significant variability in how IPSV is investigated by police forces. Despite widespread support for taking a specialist approach to investigating sexual offending, not much attention has been given to the best way to configure specialist units. This article explores officers’ perceptions of the challenges of conducting investigations of this type and considers how variability in how IPSV is located may impact the ability of officers to overcome those challenges. We find that forces who locate the investigation of IPSV with specialist domestic abuse officers appear more likely to be able to overcome the challenges associated with this type of offending, due to more consistent understanding of the context of coercive control in which it typically occurs.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.
Publisher Keywords:	Intimate partner sexual violence, coercive control, domestic abuse, police investigation
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HN Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform H Social Sciences > HV Social pathology. Social and public welfare
Departments:	School of Policy & Global Affairs School of Policy & Global Affairs > Sociology & Criminology The City Law School The City Law School > Academic Programmes
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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