HM Prison and Probation Service reissued its domestic abuse policy this month promising updated statistics. The ONS's own newer figures, published ten months earlier, show far more abuse than the version HMPPS chose to publish.
Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
In short. HMPPS's Domestic Abuse Policy Framework, reissued 5 October 2026, names "Up to date evidence / statistics" as one of six listed changes (page 4) [1]. The prevalence figures it quotes, 1.6 million women and 712,000 men, come from an ONS release that was itself superseded by a newer bulletin, showing 2.2 million women and 1.5 million men, ten months before this reissue went to print [4]. Its homicide count stops two years short of ONS's most recent figures, published eight months before reissue [5]. And the newest intervention-effectiveness evidence it cites, from two HMPPS studies of the Kaizen and Becoming New Me Plus/New Me Strengths programmes, comes from reports that call themselves "uncontrolled before-after" evaluations and say plainly that causality cannot be inferred from their own results [6] [7]. Five documented mistakes: three stars.
Every prison governor and every probation officer in England and Wales works from the same rulebook when a domestic abuse case crosses their desk: HM Prison and Probation Service's Domestic Abuse Policy Framework, reissued on 5 October 2026 [1] [2]. Its own revision log records a hyperlink fix in June 2024 and, before that, a substantive update in September 2022 [1]; this is the first rewrite of its evidence base in four years. The log for 5 October lists six specific changes, headed by "Up to date evidence / statistics (s3)" (page 4) [1]. Checked against what has actually been published since, the two statistics anchoring that section had already been overtaken, and the newest research it cites to justify mandatory interventions carries a caveat the Framework never repeats.
The figures it calls up to date are ten months behind ONS's own numbers
Paragraph 3.3 makes the headline case for how widespread domestic abuse is: "In November 2024, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reported that, according to the Crime Survey for England and Wales year ending March 2024, an estimated 1.6 million women and 712,000 men aged 16 years and over experienced domestic abuse in the last year" (page 11) [1]. A footnote names the source directly, "Source ONS 2024" [1], and ONS's own bulletin for that year confirms the figure [3].
It is not ONS's newest figure. ONS published the following year's edition of the same bulletin, Domestic abuse victim characteristics, England and Wales: year ending March 2025, on 26 November 2025 [4] - ten months before this Framework went back to print. It found an estimated 2.2 million women and 1.5 million men aged 16 and over experienced domestic abuse in the last year, prevalence rates of 9.1 per cent for women and 6.5 per cent for men [4]. Women's estimated prevalence rose by roughly 600,000; men's more than doubled. None of it appears in the document whose own change log claims to have brought section 3 up to date.
The homicide count in the paragraph immediately before fares no better. It states there were "352 domestic homicides recorded by the police in the three-year period between year ending March 2021 and year ending March 2023" (page 10) [1]. ONS's most recent homicide bulletin, Homicide in England and Wales: year ending March 2025, was published on 5 February 2026 [5] - eight months before this reissue - and found 111 domestic homicides in that single year, 67 of them committed by a partner or ex-partner [5]. The Framework's own figures stop two full annual cycles short of data that existed, and was freely published, well before its "up to date" revision shipped.
The newer research comes with a caveat the Framework leaves out
Section 3 also makes the case for the interventions the Framework mandates: referral to an "appropriate accredited programme" is a requirement, not an option, for every eligible perpetrator (page 13) [1]. Its oldest piece of evidence is also its strongest. A 2015 evaluation of two earlier programmes, the Integrated Domestic Abuse Programme and the Community Domestic Violence Programme, "demonstrated small but statistically significant effects in reducing both domestic abuse and general reoffending in the two year follow up period," the Framework says (page 12) [1]. That is an accurate summary: the study, commissioned by the National Offender Management Service and authored by Sinead Bloomfield and Louise Dixon, tracked 6,695 offenders referred between 2002 and 2007, with 2,158 who never started either programme serving as a genuine comparison group, and measured actual reoffending, not a questionnaire score [8].
The Framework then turns to what it calls more recent evidence: HMPPS's own evaluations of its current programmes, Kaizen and the paired Becoming New Me Plus (BNM+) and New Me Strengths (NMS) courses, scored against a tool called the Success Wheel Measure. "The studies suggest that taking part in Kaizen, BNM+, or NMS can have large, statistically significant positive effects on the areas targeted by the programmes," the Framework reports: scores rose 37 to 41 per cent for Kaizen and 31 per cent for BNM+ and NMS (page 12) [1].
Both source reports carry the limitation in their own titles: Kaizen: an uncontrolled before-after evaluation of short-term clinical outcomes and LDC suite: an uncontrolled before-after study of short-term clinical outcomes, both published by the Ministry of Justice on 9 January 2025 [6] [7]. "The lack of a control group means changes in SWM scores cannot be directly attributed to Kaizen participation," the Kaizen report states on its second page, ahead of its own key results [6]. Its discussion section is blunter: "causality cannot be inferred from the programme on the observed change due to the lack of control group," and the measured progress "does not necessarily translate to reductions in future reoffending. Evidence that improvements in psychometric scores predict decreases in reoffending is mixed" (page 24) [6]. The BNM+/NMS report repeats the same finding almost word for word on its own page 26 [7]. Neither caveat, nor the word "uncontrolled," appears anywhere in the Framework's own summary of either study.
The BNM+/NMS evidence has a second gap specific to the Framework's framing. It describes both studies as evaluations of "Interventions Services Accredited Programmes suitable for IPA [intimate partner abuse] offenders" (page 12) [1]. The evaluated sample was not predominantly that: 51.8 per cent of the Becoming New Me Plus participants and 31.0 per cent of the New Me Strengths participants had a proven history of intimate partner violence, the rest carrying general violence or sexual offending convictions instead [7]. The report's own regression analysis tested whether an IPV history changed how much a participant's score moved, and found none: "neither a history of intimate partner violence nor a history of sexual offending significantly affected the change in SWM score pre-to-post programme" (pages 25-26) [7]. The study the Framework cites to support domestic-abuse-specific interventions does not show that a domestic abuse history makes any measurable difference to its own result.
Credit where due
The 5 October reissue is not cosmetic everywhere. It incorporates the Crime and Policing Act 2026's new definition of "honour"-based abuse (page 10) [1] and the new Judicial Finding of Domestic Abuse, which lets courts formally record that an offence involved domestic abuse even where the conviction itself does not show it (page 13) [1] - both genuinely current legal developments, folded in within months of taking effect. And for all the gaps in its evidence section, the Framework's actual requirements do not depend on the Success Wheel studies holding up: a risk assessment, a Spousal Assault Risk Assessment and referral to an appropriate intervention are mandatory for every identified case regardless of which study reads more favourably (page 13) [1]. The weak evidence is cited to support an approach the Framework would require anyway.
The claims, tested
| The document's own words | What the record shows | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| "Up to date evidence / statistics (s3)" is listed as a named change in the 5 October 2026 reissue (page 4) [1] | The prevalence figure (1.6m women, 712k men) and homicide count (to March 2023) are both from ONS releases superseded ten and eight months respectively before reissue [4] [5] | The claimed fix is itself already out of date |
| Kaizen and BNM+/NMS evaluations "can have large, statistically significant positive effects" (page 12) [1] | Both source reports are titled "uncontrolled before-after" studies whose own text says causality cannot be inferred and the measured change "does not necessarily translate to reductions in future reoffending" [6] [7] | Evidence cited without the limitation that defines it |
| BNM+/NMS described as evidence for "programmes suitable for IPA offenders" (page 12) [1] | Under a third to just over half of the evaluated sample had a proven IPV history, and that history made no significant difference to the measured result [7] | The cited study does not test what it is cited to support |
Verdict
Three stars, from five documented mistakes. None of them are about whether these interventions work: the one piece of evidence in section 3 that actually measures reoffending against a real comparison group, a decade-old study of predecessor programmes, holds up exactly as the Framework describes it. The newer evidence, the kind its own revision log boasts about adding, is weaker than the old evidence it sits beside, and the Framework never tells the reader that. A rulebook that updates its sources without checking whether they are still the newest ones has not actually brought its evidence up to date; it has just changed the date on the cover.
The star score counts five documented mistakes: the prevalence statistic (1.6 million women, 712,000 men) drawn from an ONS release superseded by a newer one, showing 2.2 million women and 1.5 million men, ten months before this reissue; the homicide count, which stops at the year ending March 2023 despite ONS's most recent homicide bulletin, covering the year ending March 2025, being published eight months before reissue; the Kaizen programme's cited 37-41 per cent Success Wheel Measure gain, presented without the source study's own statement that "causality cannot be inferred" from an uncontrolled design; the Becoming New Me Plus/New Me Strengths programmes' cited 31 per cent gain, carrying the identical omitted caveat from its own, separately published evaluation; and the framing of that evaluation as evidence for "IPA offenders" when under a third to just over half of its sample had a proven intimate partner violence history, a factor its own analysis found made no significant difference to the result. Five falls in the 4 to 9 band: three stars; the bands are on the ratings page. This piece makes no finding that the interventions the Framework mandates do not work, or that domestic abuse perpetrators should not be referred to them; the one study in section 3 that used a genuine comparison group and measured actual reoffending supports the Framework's approach. The finding is narrower: a document that names "up to date evidence and statistics" as a specific change has not achieved that for either of its two headline statistics, and cites newer intervention research without the caveats that research's own authors attach to it. Checked directly against the 43-page Domestic Abuse Policy Framework PDF (full text), its gov.uk publication page, ONS's domestic abuse victim characteristics bulletins for the years ending March 2024 and March 2025, ONS's homicide bulletin for the year ending March 2025, the Kaizen and LDC suite evaluation reports in full, and the Bloomfield and Dixon (2015) evaluation's published abstract (all fetched 6 October 2026).
Sources
- Domestic Abuse Policy Framework, HM Prison and Probation Service, re-issued 5 October 2026
- Domestic abuse policy framework, Ministry of Justice, publication page, updated 5 October 2026
- Domestic abuse victim characteristics, England and Wales: year ending March 2024, Office for National Statistics, published 27 November 2024
- Domestic abuse victim characteristics, England and Wales: year ending March 2025, Office for National Statistics, published 26 November 2025
- Homicide in England and Wales: year ending March 2025, Office for National Statistics, published 5 February 2026
- Kaizen: an uncontrolled before-after evaluation of short-term clinical outcomes, Ministry of Justice, published 9 January 2025
- LDC suite: an uncontrolled before-after study of short-term clinical outcomes, Ministry of Justice, published 9 January 2025
- An Outcome Evaluation of the Integrated Domestic Abuse Programme (IDAP) and Community Domestic Violence Programme (CDVP), Bloomfield, S. and Dixon, L., National Offender Management Service, published 30 July 2015