evidoria

← Back to browse

Good practice Imported

The Femicide Census — the UK's Cross-Referenced National Database of Women Killed by Men

United Kingdom · London · See the United Kingdom profile · See the London profile

Evidence: Observational / pre–post Top 42% 74/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Since 2015 the Femicide Census has cross-referenced UK police, court and media records to document over 1,000 women killed by men since 2009, filling a data gap official statistics left open and informing parliamentary debate and Domestic Homicide Review practice.

149 women
Women killed by men in the UK in a single year (2018) (2018)
147 men
Men responsible for those killings (2018)
1,000+ women
Women recorded killed by men since 2009 (2009–present)

Details

Maturity
Established
Promoter
Femicide Census (Nia and Women's Aid, founded by Karen Ingala Smith and Clarissa O'Callaghan)
Period
2015–present (covering deaths since 2009)
Keywords
civil society, criminal justice, data & monitoring

Context

Launched in 2015 by Karen Ingala Smith and Clarissa O'Callaghan, working with the charity Nia and Women's Aid and supported pro bono by Freshfields and Deloitte, the Femicide Census set out to close a specific data gap: no single UK source recorded the identities, ages, relationships and circumstances of every woman killed by a man.

Activities

Researchers cross-reference data supplied by UK police forces against court records, judges' sentencing remarks, statutory Domestic Homicide Reviews and media reporting, building individual case profiles rather than relying on aggregate crime statistics alone. Coverage, initially England and Wales from 2009, has since been extended to Northern Ireland and Scotland.

Results

The Census's 2020 report recorded 149 women killed by 147 men in the UK in a single year (2018), with victims ranging from 14 to 100 years old; over 1,000 women have been recorded since 2009.

Conclusions

Its findings are read into parliamentary record by MPs each International Women's Day and are cited in reviews of how Domestic Homicide Reviews are conducted. As a monitoring project rather than an intervention, the Census does not itself claim to reduce femicide, and no cost-efficiency data on its research model has been published; its contribution is evidentiary rather than programmatic.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Low (< €50k)
Time to results
Long (> 3 years)
Staffing & skills
Founded by Karen Ingala Smith and Clarissa O'Callaghan, working with the charity Nia and Women's Aid, Supported pro bono by Freshfields and Deloitte

Conditions for success

  • Systematic cross-referencing of UK police-force data against court records, judges' sentencing remarks, statutory Domestic Homicide Reviews and media reporting
  • Pro bono professional-services support for data processing

Common failure modes

  • As a monitoring project it does not itself claim to reduce femicide
  • No cost-efficiency data on its research model has been published

Where it fits

Governance type
civil-society/charity-run monitoring project
Scale
national (England & Wales, extended to Northern Ireland and Scotland)

Do you run this practice? Claim it — verified implementers get a public contact pathway and can propose corrections.

Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

Similar practices you may find useful