Reviewed and updated 21 August 2026 against the current Crown Prosecution Service VAWG Strategy, prosecution guidance and the Crime and Policing Act 2026.
By Aneeta Prem MBE
The Crown Prosecution Service’s Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy for 2025–2030 is built around two priorities: increasing casework quality and increasing trust in the CPS.
Those aims are broad. The useful part of the strategy is that it also sets out specific work against which progress can be judged.
It includes new training on so-called honour-based abuse, forced marriage, FGM and stalking; action plans for harmful practices and stalking; stronger victim communication; national scrutiny panels; better data and case flagging; and a continued suspect-centric, victim-focused and trauma-informed approach.
What VAWG means in CPS work
VAWG is an umbrella policy category, not one criminal offence.
The CPS uses it to bring together crimes that disproportionately affect women and girls, including domestic abuse, rape and sexual offences, stalking, forced marriage, FGM and so-called honour-based abuse.
Men and boys can also be victims of several of these offences. The CPS strategy recognises that and includes work on its public statement for male victims.
Criminal charges still depend on the individual offence and the evidence in the case.
Priority one: improving casework quality
The strategy says VAWG offending is changing, particularly through technology.
Tracking apps, online targeting, cyberflashing, intimate deepfakes and other technology-facilitated abuse create evidential and legal challenges that prosecutors have to understand.
The CPS therefore commits to developing specialist training, updating guidance and working with police and other partners on changing forms of offending.
For safeguarding areas closely connected to my own work, the strategy specifically commits to:
- new training modules on honour-based abuse, forced marriage, FGM and stalking or harassment;
- updated honour-based-abuse prosecution guidance;
- a dedicated honour-based abuse, forced marriage and FGM Action Plan;
- a national multi-agency conference on HBA and FGM;
- a Stalking Action Plan; and
- better knowledge of offences facilitated by new technology.
The suspect-centric approach
One of the strategy’s recurring principles is a suspect-centric, victim-focused and trauma-informed approach.
In practical terms, suspect-centric casework means examining the alleged offender’s behaviour rather than placing undue emphasis on what the victim did or did not do.
That can include looking for patterns before, during and after an alleged offence, previous allegations or convictions, digital evidence, forensic evidence and evidence from other witnesses.
It does not remove the need for fair investigation or the evidential test for prosecution. It is intended to challenge assumptions that can distort how a case is understood.
Why this matters in forced marriage and family-enforced abuse
Forced marriage and related abuse can involve several people, repeated pressure and conduct that looks different when incidents are joined together.
A single message, travel plan or family conversation may not prove an offence. A wider pattern involving surveillance, threats, financial pressure, confiscation of documents, violence or preparations for an unwanted marriage may tell a different story.
The CPS’s current harmful-practices guidance now includes issues such as dowry abuse, immigration-related abuse, transnational marriage abandonment and spiritual or ritual abuse.
The Crime and Policing Act 2026 has enacted sections 143 and 144, which provide a statutory framework and definition of honour-based abuse for multi-agency guidance. As at 21 August 2026, those sections still require commencement regulations and are not yet in force. They do not create a standalone criminal offence called honour-based abuse.
Priority two: increasing trust
The CPS accepts in the strategy that it has not always provided victims with the service they should receive.
Its commitments include improved explanations of charging decisions, dedicated victim liaison in rape and serious sexual-offence cases, Victim Service Standards, better police-CPS communication and clearer information about special measures.
It also plans national scrutiny panels covering areas including rape, honour-based abuse and FGM, and modern slavery.
These commitments matter because trust is affected not only by whether a prosecution succeeds, but by whether victims understand what is happening and feel they have been treated fairly and consistently.
Data should make progress visible
The strategy also commits to better case flagging, use of dashboards and public reporting across a wider range of VAWG offences.
That may sound technical, but it matters.
If harmful-practice cases are recorded inconsistently, it becomes difficult to see where referrals, charges or outcomes are changing and difficult to identify differences between CPS areas.
Good data cannot tell us the full prevalence of hidden abuse. It can show whether the criminal justice system is identifying and handling the cases that reach it consistently.
What the strategy does not promise
The CPS cannot prevent all VAWG by itself.
Police investigate. The CPS makes independent prosecution decisions in cases referred to it. Courts determine guilt and sentence. Schools, health services, social care, specialist charities and other agencies have different safeguarding responsibilities.
The strategy should therefore be judged on what lies within the CPS’s role: quality of prosecution decision-making, case strategy, communication, training, data, partnership working and service to victims.
Why I use the term dishonour abuse
The CPS and legislation use the official term “honour-based abuse”, and that language should be understood when reading law and professional guidance.
In my own safeguarding work, I use dishonour abuse because the victim has not dishonoured anyone. The shame belongs to the people using coercion, threats or violence.
That is a campaigning language choice, not a substitute legal definition.
What should be measured by 2030?
A five-year strategy needs more than a launch document.
Useful tests will include whether specialist training has been delivered, whether new action plans are operating, whether victims receive the promised communication, whether case flagging improves and whether scrutiny panels lead to identifiable changes in practice.
The CPS also needs to publish enough information for the public to judge progress rather than relying on broad claims of improvement.
Final word
The CPS VAWG Strategy contains serious commitments and acknowledges areas where the service needs to improve.
The right response is neither automatic praise nor automatic scepticism.
The test is whether the actions promised between 2025 and 2030 become routine practice in real cases.
Sources and further reading
- Crown Prosecution Service: VAWG Strategy 2025–2030
- CPS: Violence Against Women and Girls guidance
- CPS: honour-based abuse, forced marriage and harmful practices
- Crime and Policing Act 2026, section 143
- Crime and Policing Act 2026, section 144
