Dear XX,

Subject: Congratulations on being elected Police and Crime Commissioner for [Insert County/ Force Area]

May I offer my congratulations on your being elected Police & Crime Commissioner for XX. I am delighted for you and I am sure that you will do an excellent job for our County.

It would be great to have an opportunity to discuss in further detail some of the thorny issues around sex and gender conflation, and how XX police force goes about crime reporting and recording, including examining XX Police‘s relationship with Stonewall?

Primarily, I’d wish to discuss how best you can facilitate with your Chief Constable instituting the following measures:

• Crimes being recorded noting the biological sex of the perpetrator. Gender must not be substituted for sex in crime statistics. As noted in the Times, “the position (of recording offences by gender ID) could lead to a “distortion” in society’s understanding of crime and the measures needed to tackle it." https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rape-suspects-can-choose-to-self-identify-as-female-vfl678tg6 
• Victims of sexual assault being able to request an interviewer of the same Sex, not Gender. I remain concerned that Point 2.8 in the recently released Code of Practice for Victims of Crime only makes reference to “the police officer conducting the interview is of a gender of your choice”. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/974376/victims-code-2020.pdf 
• Strip searches on female suspects should be carried out by officers of the same sex, in accordance with the Parliamentary Act of Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 in Code H Annex A: “When strip searches are conducted: (a) a police officer carrying out a strip search must be the same sex as the detainee”.  

I am hoping that, as the PCC also chairs the local Criminal Justice Board, this will be an opportunity for you to reinforce prioritising offences against women within the overall policing system in XX, as well as ensuring there is a VAWG strategy in your Police and Crime Plan. Perhaps, you could consider in your role as PCC, convening and funding a Violence Against Women and Girls Gold Group or Violence Reduction Unit (if one doesn’t exist in force already), which will look at making a proper assessment of the scale and nature of all forms of violence against women and girls, and make informed decisions about recording of misogyny, training of officers in this area, and more?

It might be worth engaging in a series of roundtables with all organisations in XX county working in VAWG to common aims (the police, local authorities, the CPS, probation, local voluntary and faith sectors, NHS, and so on), in order to write a delivery plan and strategy for this area of work, which will enable some in-depth data analysis and help inform your policing priorities and spending plans accordingly, going forward.

I’m also interested in finding out whether as PCC, you will commission funding of some of our local female only specialists’ services for victims of male violence. And if you will ensure the police officers under the command of [insert Chief Constable name] spark up positive intervention and public awareness campaigns for misogynist offences, like they do for ‘LGBT’ campaigns?

It seems evident that we cannot fight VAWG (a societal issue which has been compounded by social media and the easy access to pornography), in XX if we’re not clear what women and girls are. It will also be difficult to take appropriate steps to combat VAWG if we don’t know who the overwhelming majority of perpetrators are. 

I hope you will be able to follow up with the Chief Constable on the everyday policing issue of VAWG, which forms a large proportion of all police call-outs, investigations, and protection duties. Beyond the tragic murder of Sarah Everard, the Guardian also recently published an article, highlighting not only the epidemic of violence against Women in the UK, but also pointing out "the most striking aspects of the killing of young women over the decade is the repetition of fatal errors by authorities including police and other agencies..."

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/apr/25/the-uks-femicide-epidemic-whos-killing-our-daughters

Whilst we need better communication between parents and their children, between teachers and their pupils, between the police and the public, to tackle the issue of Violence against Women and Girls, we also need to break the cycle of "the repetition of fatal errors by authorities", and in my view, it is worth noting the words of one PCC Candidate, a criminologist, during this election cycle: 

“From the point of view of policy formation and the development of interventions, we need to avoid the tendency (which unfortunately far too many public agencies demonstrate) to conflate ‘sex’ and ‘gender’, or use them inter-changeably, when collecting or recording data, or to assume that gender as a category also covers sex…"

"This is especially important for collecting, analysing and utilising data on crime and victimisation because there are specific documented sex-related factors that impact on people’s experience of crime and victimisation... all of these trends and experiences could or should be reflected in public policy and interventions to tackle social problems, allocate public resources, identify emerging challenges and risks etc.”

If you would be good enough to contact me when the dust has settled, and you have time for us to discuss further, I’d very much appreciate it.

Yours sincerely,

XX