Implementing a perpetrator-focused partnership approach to tackling domestic abuse: The opportunities and challenges of criminal justice localism

This article reports on a perpetrator-focused partnership approach to tackling domestic abuse. The package of interventions includes an identification tool and a unique multi-agency partnership approach to violence prevention and tackling abuse through perpetrator-focused early interventions. An overview of the key outcomes and issues emerging from this innovative package and partnership approach in one policing area in England is offered. Our discussion focuses on issues relating to the development of the co-ordination of the multi-agency tasking and co-ordination (MATAC) approach to addressing domestic abuse, particularly within the context of the opportunities and challenges of the localism agenda in criminal justice. Perceived concerns within the MATAC partnership, about victim safety alongside a heightened 'focus on perpetrators', caused us to critically reflect on the convergence of the politics of multi-agency working at very local levels. Our conclusion is that partnership working remains important in the shifting economic and political context in which local agenda setting and commissioning is occurring. The local still matters, and is as challenging as it ever was, in ensuring victim safety.