Ensuring Safety : Domestic violence protection notices and orders (DVPN-Os)

Whittle, Mandi and Barlow, Charlotte and Walklate, Sandra and Towers, Jude (2025) Ensuring Safety : Domestic violence protection notices and orders (DVPN-Os). PhD thesis, Law School.

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Abstract

Emergency barring orders (EBOs), endorsed by Article 52 of the Istanbul Convention, are designed to provide immediate protection for victims of domestic violence and abuse (DVA). UK EBOs - Domestic Violence Protection Notices and Orders (DVPN-Os) - were introduced in England and Wales in 2014 to bridge a protective gap when a charge or bail conditions are unavailable. A decade post-implementation, little is known about how they are operationalised in practice. This thesis examines their use, enforcement, and practitioner perceptions in one metropolitan police force. Drawing on a mixed methods design the thesis combines quantitative analysis of police records (including two novel datasets: a three-year trend dataset [n=1,724] and a contextual dataset [n=535]), with qualitative interviews with police officers and Independent Domestic Violence Advocates (IDVAs). The thesis provides the first known end-to-end case-studies of the DVPN-O journey, offering rare insight into Superintendent authorisations and enforcement practices. The post-issuance picture reveals uneven policing and distinct differences in victim-perpetrator contacts. The thesis also makes visible DVPO use in familial cases, highlighting applications in ‘older abuse’ and ‘child-to-parent abuse’. A key empirical contribution is the systematic capture of victims’ ‘willingness to support’ DVPN-Os. This indicator reveals important differences between intimate partner and familial cases, contributing to debates around victim self-determination, (dis)engagement, and safeguarding in the absence of a conviction. Conceptually, the thesis introduces the ideas of ‘double attrition’ and ‘positive attrition’ and proposes a new police data-recording methodology to capture the hidden ‘work done’ around DVA protection orders. This makes victim consent, breach patterns, and proactive policing activity visible, addressing a key data gap in the absence of a national database. Such visibility may help raise the institutional profile of EBOs and inform the implementation of the new Domestic Abuse Protection Notices/Orders (DAPN-Os).