The current domestic violence risk assessment has its design flaws, and both evidence-based social sciences and legal studies have long established this shortcoming. But it is extremely difficult to understand how putting a kitchen knife to the victim’s throat constitutes only a medium risk on any given day.

It actually happened on Mother’s Day, a court was told, a symbolic detail which escaped the assessors, apparently.

To put a knife to the throat of your children’s mother, in the family home, on that one day in the year that officially celebrates motherhood, leaving no option for the mother-victim but to leave home to save her life and limb instead, is seriously shocking. Yet it was treated as a non-event by the enforcers and protectors. It didn’t ring a bell that the emotional abuse and isolation were sourced by the power-as-domination dynamics in the relationship.

I don’t know whether the social workers’ risk assessment in the Bernice Cilia case was vetted by the police, but it’s beyond incredulity at this point. The knife was literally invisible to the assessors, as was the significant correlation of the intimate home environment in which it occurred, the clear and present danger to the mother, the progressive escalating chain of violence, and the ultimate narcissistic discard, humiliation, domination, and isolation of a mother who had to leave home. In plain sight to all except to the experts.

Given that the lowest crime rate was recorded for the past 20 years, it’s small wonder that knives have become invisible too. Gaslighted. It’s clearly a case of enforcement myopia and a general laissez-faire culture, not of criminal desistance, which is why the statistic is disturbing.

It's not just knives that have become invisible: even eco-offences are in danger of extinction, with only 115 charges meted out by LESA in relation to 305 the year before. Even 300 is a risible figure and it pains me that this cluster of offences hasn’t been effectively detected. There are at least around 400 different eco-offences on the statute books and yet green enforcement isn’t a priority. The 2050 national environmental strategy mentions effective enforcement at least 40 times. Empty rhetoric, once again.  

It’s not that there’s a lack of opportunities for enforcement - look around you. If the National Auditor had to study this phenomenon in the same way he has audited the LESA traffic section, what would such overt non-feasance of our green enforcement look like?

Malta should be an easy jurisdiction to police, given its small spatial extent and connectivity between people. So, what’s the reason for such a shoddy performance? It’s clearly a case of lazy enforcement, top to bottom and vice-versa. What happened last year to cause this myopia? The March Election or over-focusing law enforcement resources on overcoming the FATF’s grey-listing? Whatever the cause, it looks like one long summer siesta of non-law enforcement.

There’s more hope in Peter the Customs’ K9 star that sniffed almost €600,000 of undeclared cash in 4 years of service. And that’s just cash: it also detected 150 kilos of tobacco, plus cannabis and cocaine on three different occasions. ‘He’ deservedly won the Best Dog in Uniform award two years ago.

So back to the invisibility of domestic violence knives. DASH is the Domestic Abuse, Stalking, Harassment and Honour-Based Violence risk assessment used in Malta. It was introduced in the UK in 2009 but after 13 years, the UK College of Policing replaced it with DARA, the Domestic Abuse Risk Assessment, because of a number of shortcomings. DARA is more focused on the perpetrator’s coercive and controlling behaviour, and mixes both risk-based and rule-based approaches to domestic violence.

Yet the DASH instructions make it amply clear that even if the score is 14 ‘yes’ out of the total of 27, which reads as ‘low risk’, a case can still can be treated as high-risk if flagged by professional judgement. One does not exclude the other. In fact, there are questions at the end of the survey based on the professional’s instincts, experience, and interpretation of the victim’s levels of fear, control and isolation that further safeguards the victim.

The difference is that DASH does not mention ‘knives’, but ‘weapons and objects’ in question 16, whereas DARA specifically uses the word ‘knives’ in question 10. Could Bernice Cilia’s assessment be a  ‘lost in translation’ case especially if it was done by a social worker who was not legally trained? Could a linguistic misinterpretation so easily kick common sense out of the picture?

Or is it evidence of enforcement myopia?  

It’s high time that the DV police are allowed to participate in or even overrule the social workers’ assessment. Alternatively, one can introduce DARA and compare the results of the two risk assessments, in the best interest of the victim and the children.