Chief Constable Gary Roberts has said the enforcement of the domestic abuse act will help the police better tackle the issue.

The recent Safeguarding Board’s review regarding the killing of a mother by her son, reported that the island lacks the basic infrastructure to deal with domestic abuse.

Mr Roberts disclosed that there are between 750 and 800 reports of domestic abuse in the island annually.

The new legislation will come to effect on January 4, 2023.

Mr Roberts said: ‘The domestic abuse act defines domestic abuse for the first time, it creates a specific domestic abuse offence which we haven’t had before, and it also creates an offence of coercive and controlling behaviour.

‘Currently the police have to look for an assault, try and find evidence of the assault and prosecute, so it is much more difficult.’

However, Mr Roberts highlighted that the police force will still face many challenges even with the legislation, with the major limitation being the ability and confidence for victims to report incidents.

Looking to the UK who have a domestic abuse act, the police there made 33 arrests per 100 domestic abuse crimes.

He added: ‘For the law to work properly, people have to come forward and share not just what is happening to them, but people of the community need to share their concerns about domestic abuse.’

Mr Roberts said: ‘I’ve asked the home office to put together legislation to allow me safely to share the history of domestic abusers with new partners, so when people move from partner to partner, and continue their abusive patterns, I can inform them.’

The Chief Constable is a statutory member of the Safeguarding Board, an independent body that carries out reviews of matters of safeguarding.

The recent review investigates the case where a mother was a victim of domestic abuse by her husband, but it was her son who killed her.

Mr Roberts said: ‘It is always difficult, domestic abuse is a wicked problem.

‘In this case police were called once to a domestic abuse problem between mother and father, not involving the son at all, and it was very clear that they didn’t want the police to be involved at all. The police had no grounds at that point to intervene, or no grounds to share information.’

He added: ‘There are two threads running through this that often run through other serious case management reviews.

‘One is professionals not being curious. There were opportunities for some professionals to look at what was happening in the family and ask questions. Had they asked questions in the right way, the answers would have led them to take action.

‘The second is that there were issues around members of the public reporting concerns for the young man himself around his mental health, and the thresholds for carrying out that mental health assessment when the young man himself didn’t consent to it.’

He added: ‘The review found that the death could not have been predicted or prevented, but there certainly are clear lessons to be learnt, professional curiosity is one of them.’