Respectfully disagree. Research shows that it is needed.
From Dr. Richards, who worked at New Scotland Yard (BBM)
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Additionally, non-fatal strangulation will become a crime. Too often I have seen attacks on women who were almost killed categorised as common assault by police. Strangulation is a high risk factor to serious harm and femicide. We know from research that strangulation increases the harm of femicide sevenfold."
Strangulation is considered a crime when the victim died. But if there was no death? Even after repeated attempts at strangling? It's usually considered a much lower offence (assault charges instead of attempted murder), which allow the abuser to continue abusing.
Btw here is Richard's cv:
After a decade of analysing violent crime at New Scotland Yard Laura became the violence adviser to the National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC). Trained by world leaders as a criminal behavioural analyst at the Behavioural Analysis Unit, National Centre for the Analysis of Violent Crime at the FBI and New Scotland Yard, Laura has applied her psychology degrees to analyse violent crime from a behavioural and preventative perspective.
Oh, I'm sorry - I wasn't speaking about the social need for it.
Only the legal need. People are charged with assault or murder in places with no specific statute for strangulation (which was part of the conversation in the post I responded to).
Passing extra laws is fine. However, here in California, a man who puts his hands on a woman's throat and even leaves pink marks will go to jail. Even if he's a policeman himself. Of course, the woman or her family have to call the police, which is a separate problem.
But DV is treated with zero tolerance where I live. My main research in the past 5 years has been jail based. DV is by far the most common reason men (and some women) are in jail. Sometimes there's no physical damage recorded at all (broken door frames, etc)
We don't have separate statutes for each form of possible violence, but the zero tolerance policy (with no requirement whatsoever for the victim to follow through with testimony or prosecution ) is definitely helping.
I don't think I've ever seen an assault on a woman where I live that wasn't categorized as DV if the assailant lived in her household or she had a prior intimate relationship with the man. It's always DV (and usually double charges). Sounds like Britain may be different.
Since these policies and laws went through (I spent years working to train LE and teaching at a major police academy, no the topics of DV and gender discrimination/harassment/bias, as well as LGBQT rights), we have seen a decrease in second offenses in my county (less recidivism) but more arrests of women.
For a while, the sociologist I was working with worried that woman would "catch up" in terms of DV offenses (since, like men, they are being arrested if there are any marks at all on their partner). We do not do this with other crimes, btw (automatic arrest and detention). But, it has leveled off and thankfully, COVID hasn't made much of a difference - in fact, it seems we have had slightly less violent crime in my city.
At any. rate, passing strict DV laws has helped - but so far, no one in Sacramento seems to think we need a separate statute for strangulation.
