By Aneeta Prem MBE
For years, professionals in England and Wales have been expected to recognise so-called honour-based abuse without a statutory definition of the behaviour they were being asked to identify.
That position has now changed in legislation.
Sections 143 and 144 of the Crime and Policing Act 2026 provide for statutory guidance on honour-based abuse and set out what the term means for the purposes of that guidance.
That sounds straightforward. It is not.
Parliament has not created a new criminal offence called honour-based abuse. Nor does enactment mean that the relevant provisions, guidance and operational changes all took effect on the day the Act received Royal Assent.
Those distinctions matter.
So does a larger one.
A definition can tell professionals what to look for. It cannot make them look.
The significance of this reform will therefore depend less on the existence of new words in statute than on what happens when a frightened person sits opposite a teacher, doctor, police officer or social worker and tries to explain that something is wrong.
What has Parliament actually defined?
Section 144 sets out a definition of honour-based abuse for the purposes of the statutory-guidance provision in section 143.
Broadly, it concerns abusive behaviour towards a family member or another person with a specified connection, where the perpetrator is motivated wholly or partly by a perception that the other person has behaved, is behaving or may behave in a way that brings shame or dishonour and breaches accepted community norms.
The legislation expressly includes physical or sexual abuse, violent or threatening behaviour, controlling or coercive behaviour, economic abuse, spiritual abuse, and psychological or emotional abuse. It also recognises that abuse may consist of a single incident or a course of conduct.
The full statutory wording matters, particularly for lawyers and practitioners. The enacted text of section 144 should be the starting point rather than any newspaper summary of it.
The breadth of the definition is important because the person at risk may not present with a visible injury.
The first indication may instead be that a freedom has disappeared.
A young woman may no longer be allowed to continue her education. A telephone may be monitored. A relationship may be forbidden. Money or documents may be controlled. Travel may be arranged against somebody's wishes. A person may discover that saying no carries consequences.
The value of the definition lies partly in recognising that abuse can exist before, alongside or without an assault.
What the police figures do, and do not, tell us
In the year ending March 2025, police in England and Wales recorded 2,949 offences identified as related to so-called honour-based abuse. Of those, 109 were classified as female genital mutilation offences and 125 as forced-marriage offences. Controlling or coercive behaviour accounted for 22% of the total.
The headline total was 7% higher than the previous year.
That does not mean we can conclude that honour-based abuse itself rose by 7%.
The Home Office statistics warn that police-recorded figures are affected by recording practices, professional identification, victims' willingness or ability to report, and genuine changes in offending. The Home Office also describes honour-based abuse as a hidden crime and says the recorded figures are likely to represent only a fraction of what occurs.
That qualification is not a statistical footnote. It goes to the heart of the problem.
If professionals do not consistently recognise the abuse, the state cannot consistently record it. If the state cannot reliably identify what is happening, it becomes much harder to know where safeguarding is succeeding and where it is failing.
Parliament argued about a very small word
One of the most revealing debates during the passage of the Bill concerned the word person.
Honour-based abuse does not always fit neatly into a model of one victim and one perpetrator. Sometimes several people participate.
One person sets the rule. Another monitors. Another threatens. Another organises travel or a marriage. Someone else passes information about the victim's movements.
That does not happen in every case. But where it does, looking for a single perpetrator can produce an incomplete, and potentially dangerous, assessment of risk.
Peers raised this directly in the House of Lords. In March 2026, the Government said the definition was intended to cover multiple perpetrators and that this would be made clear in explanatory material and statutory guidance. The issue returned to the Commons in April. MPs argued that, although ordinary statutory interpretation can allow the singular to include the plural, frontline practitioners may read legislation literally.
The House of Lords debate on 4 March 2026 and the House of Commons debate on 14 April 2026 are worth reading together.
This was not an argument about grammar.
It was an argument about how safeguarding systems see risk.
A system looking for the perpetrator can miss the network.
That is one of the most important practical tests for the eventual guidance.
Information can look harmless until somebody joins it together
A school records an absence. A doctor hears that a patient is frightened. Police attended the home months earlier. A friend knows that unexpected travel is being arranged. A social worker knows that conflict has developed over a relationship.
None of those facts automatically proves honour-based abuse. Together, however, they may reveal a pattern that no single professional can see alone.
The challenge is not merely whether information exists. It is whether somebody recognises its significance.
There is a second difficulty. Information sharing can protect somebody. It can also put them at greater risk.
In forced-marriage and dishonour-abuse cases, automatically contacting a relative can be unsafe if that person is involved in the control or is likely to alert somebody who is.
That is why professional curiosity must be accompanied by professional caution.
Before contacting another person, a practitioner should be asking not only, Who might help? but also, Could telling this person make the victim less safe?
For practical safeguarding routes and boundaries, see Help and Safeguarding.
Why I call it dishonour abuse
The legislation uses the term honour-based abuse. When I am discussing the statute, I use the statutory terminology because legal precision matters.
In my wider work, I call it dishonour abuse.
The distinction is deliberate.
There is no honour in forcing somebody to marry. There is no honour in controlling a girl's education, friendships or future. There is no honour in monitoring somebody, threatening them or hurting them because they are said to have damaged a family's reputation.
My objection is not merely to a word.
When we repeat the language of honour, we risk carrying part of the perpetrator's claimed justification into our own description of the abuse.
In December 2025, this argument entered the parliamentary record. During debate on the Crime and Policing Bill, Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb said that Freedom Charity had raised the terminology with her. She told the House: “There is no honour in abuse.” She argued that the behaviour should be described as dishonour abuse rather than in language that might imply legitimacy.
The exchange is recorded in Hansard, 17 December 2025. In the Lords debate on 4 March 2026, Baroness Sugg also referred to Freedom Charity's campaign to replace the term with dishonour abuse.
Parliament ultimately enacted the statutory term honour-based abuse. That does not prevent us from questioning the language outside the statute.
The law calls it honour-based abuse. I call it dishonour abuse. The difference is deliberate.
Language must not become a substitute for practice
Changing terminology is not enough.
I do not want professionals to learn the expression dishonour abuse while continuing to miss the person experiencing it.
Nor should a statutory definition encourage crude assumptions about ethnicity, religion or culture. Honour-based abuse is not identified by somebody's name, clothing, religion or country of origin. It is identified through behaviour, motive, coercion and risk.
Professionals can fail in two directions. They can stereotype families and communities. Or they can see warning signs and become so frightened of appearing culturally insensitive that they fail to ask necessary questions.
Neither protects victims.
The proper question is not, What community is this person from?
It is, What is happening to them?
Can they make decisions freely? Can they say no? Can they choose whether and whom to marry? Can they continue their education? Can they control their own money and documents? Can they speak privately to professionals? What might happen if the people around them discover that they have asked for help?
Those questions bring safeguarding back to the person rather than the stereotype.
The Five Freedoms: a practical way to look at control
My Five Freedoms framework asks a simple question: What freedom is being denied?
The freedoms are to Choose, Refuse, Leave, Learn and Be.
They are not a substitute for legislation or professional safeguarding procedures. They are a way of looking at what coercion does to a person's life.
Can someone choose a relationship or future for themselves? Can they refuse a marriage, journey, sexual act or demand without punishment? Can they leave an unsafe situation? Can they continue to learn? Can they be themselves without fear of violence, rejection or control?
Where one or more of those freedoms is being removed through fear, pressure or family enforcement, a professional should ask why.
This is also why female genital mutilation, forced marriage and other forms of abuse cannot be understood only as isolated incidents. They concern power, autonomy and the removal of choice.
What the new legislation does not do
This is the legal distinction most likely to be lost in public discussion.
The statutory definition does not create a standalone criminal offence called honour-based abuse.
Conduct taking place in this context may already constitute criminal offending. Depending on the facts, existing law may apply to forced marriage, female genital mutilation, controlling or coercive behaviour, violence, threats, stalking, harassment, sexual offending and other criminal conduct.
Sections 143 and 144 perform a different function. They establish the framework for statutory guidance and define honour-based abuse for that purpose.
This prevents two opposite misunderstandings.
The first is claiming that Parliament has suddenly criminalised behaviour that was previously lawful. The second is assuming that because there is no single offence named honour-based abuse, conduct occurring within that context somehow falls outside the criminal law.
Neither proposition is correct.
Why the current CPS wording looks contradictory
There is an unusual transitional detail at the time of writing.
The Crown Prosecution Service's prosecution guidance, revised in February 2026, still states that there is currently no statutory definition of honour-based abuse. At the same time, Parliament has since enacted sections 143 and 144 containing a statutory definition for the guidance framework.
Those statements should not simply be presented as though one body must be wrong.
The explanation lies in legal timing.
The Act received Royal Assent on 29 April 2026. Its Explanatory Notes on commencement make clear that provisions not specifically brought into force on Royal Assent or two months later are to be commenced by regulations. Sections 143 and 144 are among those remaining provisions. The Government's July 2026 commencement circular says remaining provisions will be commenced in due course.
So there are three different stages that should not be collapsed into one: Parliament has enacted the definition; the relevant provisions require commencement; and statutory guidance must then be issued and implemented.
The current CPS guidance remains useful operational material. The timing difference simply demonstrates why journalists and practitioners need to distinguish legislation on the statute book from provisions already in force.
Parliament considered going further
Parliament also debated whether the honour-based context should have an express role in sentencing.
Amendments proposed making that context an aggravating factor when courts sentence offenders. Supporters argued that offending motivated by perceived shame or dishonour has characteristics that sentencing should expressly recognise. The debates also raised questions about the breadth and drafting of such a provision.
That specific proposal was not enacted in the form advanced during those debates.
This distinction is important.
A statutory definition for guidance and a statutory aggravating factor for sentencing are different legal interventions.
Public discussion should not collapse one into the other.
The risk of declaring the problem solved
Law can do something important. It can name behaviour. It can establish a common framework. It can require institutions to confront conduct that may previously have been described inconsistently.
What legislation cannot do is notice that a previously confident pupil has become withdrawn. It cannot hear hesitation in a patient's voice. It cannot wonder why an unexpected journey abroad has suddenly been arranged. It cannot decide that the apparently helpful relative waiting outside the consulting room may be part of the risk.
Professionals do those things.
The quality of the statutory guidance, training, supervision and implementation will therefore determine whether the definition becomes more than a legislative milestone.
Five questions I would want every professional to ask
When honour-based or dishonour abuse may be present, I would want professionals to move beyond the isolated incident and consider five questions:
- What freedom is being removed?
- Who is imposing, supporting or enforcing that control?
- Is this an isolated incident or part of a wider pattern?
- Who else may hold information that materially changes the assessment of risk?
- Could contacting another person, particularly a family member, increase the danger?
These questions do not replace safeguarding procedures, specialist advice or professional judgement. They help professionals understand what those systems need to respond to.
How should we judge the reform?
Not by the number of press releases issued about it. Not by the number of professionals who can repeat the definition. And not simply by whether recorded cases rise or fall.
Over time, better questions will be these.
Are police forces identifying and recording honour-based abuse more consistently? Do practitioners recognise multiple-perpetrator risk? Do professionals distinguish cultural understanding from cultural assumption? Are unsafe responses, including inappropriate family contact, reducing? Are different agencies joining relevant information more effectively? Are victims being recognised earlier? And are people safer after they disclose?
Those are much harder questions. They are also the ones that matter.
A definition is not protection
Parliament has done something significant by legislating for a statutory definition of honour-based abuse.
But legislation should not be mistaken for an outcome.
A definition is not protection.
It cannot guarantee that somebody will recognise coercion. It cannot guarantee that information will be joined together. It cannot guarantee that a disclosure will be handled safely.
What it can do is give professionals a clearer framework for understanding what they are seeing.
That matters because the difference between several apparently unrelated concerns and a safeguarding emergency can sometimes be one person recognising the pattern.
The real measure of this reform will therefore not be whether professionals can recite the new definition.
It will be whether somebody sees danger sooner because the definition changed the way they looked.
Legal status at 13 August 2026
The Crime and Policing Act 2026 received Royal Assent on 29 April 2026. Sections 143 and 144 contain provisions concerning statutory guidance and the statutory meaning of honour-based abuse. Under section 255, provisions not specifically commenced on Royal Assent or two months later require commencement regulations. Sections 143 and 144 fall into that remaining category.
This article therefore distinguishes between the definition having been enacted, the relevant provisions being brought into force, and statutory guidance being published and implemented. These stages are not interchangeable.
This page should be reviewed when the commencement position or statutory guidance changes.
Primary sources and further reading
- Crime and Policing Act 2026
- Crime and Policing Act 2026, section 144
- Explanatory Notes: sections 143 and 144
- Explanatory Notes: commencement
- House of Lords, Crime and Policing Bill, 17 December 2025
- House of Lords, Crime and Policing Bill, 4 March 2026
- House of Commons, Crime and Policing Bill, 14 April 2026
- Home Office: police-recorded honour-based abuse offences, year ending March 2025
- Crown Prosecution Service: honour-based abuse, forced marriage and harmful practices
Related on Aneeta.com
- The Five Freedoms
- Why I Say Dishonour Abuse
- Forced Marriage, Consent and Safeguarding
- Female Genital Mutilation and Child Protection
- Freedom Charity
About the author
Aneeta Prem MBE is the founder of Freedom Charity, an author and human-rights campaigner. Her safeguarding work includes forced marriage, female genital mutilation, dishonour abuse, consent and prevention. She is also a serving magistrate; this article is written in her personal capacity and does not represent the judiciary.
Jurisdiction: England and Wales
Published and substantively reviewed: 13 August 2026
Suggested citation: Prem, A. (2026), Honour-Based Abuse and the Crime and Policing Act 2026: What Will Really Change?, Aneeta.com.
