A 36-year-old woman was killed this week in what is believed to have been a murder which was either commissioned or committed by a jilted lover.

It is understood that the woman had filed a number of police reports in which she alleged that her ex-partner was harassing her. It is also understood that the courts issued a restraining order against the man suspected of killing her.

That, was obviously not enough to keep him away from her. As things stand, a restraining order in Malta is nothing but a piece of paper. We do not have the manpower (and neither should it be that way) to station police officers outside the house of every person who has had a restraining order issued against a violent ex partner or stalker.  It is simply not realistic.

But we obviously do need some form of deterrent that will stop abusive and violent ex-partners from being able to get close to their victims. How do we do that? The Victims Support Unit has suggested two ways of doing that.

The first is a risk assessment system, whereby victims of domestic violence are interviewed and a risk assessment of their need for possible rapid intervention is evaluated. Such a system was introduced in the United Kingdom and since its inception, violent crime against women has been slashed by half.

The Victims Support United also suggested the idea of electronic tagging. It is not just a simple GPS tag to be worn by the aggressor. The tag is worn by both the potential victim and the aggressor and when they are within a certain distance from each other, an alarm goes off and shows up directly on a screen which is monitored. Once the alarm goes off, contact is made with the nearest police unit which can then head to the scene to intervene. The system is tried and tested and it has saved lives. 

Of course, the system will cost money. But what price do we put on a human life? Murders will always take place. 80% of the ones involving women are crimes of passion. But if we take preventive action and can save at least one life, is it not worth it?

In Malta, we have a tendency to first get shocked and then forget about things very quickly as some political scandal arises. We must stop and we must take stock and we must introduce measures to bring us up to speed. Sometimes, seconds and minutes are the difference between life and death. We ought to learn from what has been introduced elsewhere and implement it here.