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Good practice Imported

VioGén — Spain's National Gender-Violence Risk-Assessment and Case-Tracking System

Spain · Madrid · See the Spain profile · See the Madrid profile

Evidence: Observational / pre–post Top 59% 59/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Live since July 2007, VioGén assigns a police risk level to every reported gender-violence case in Spain, across 4 million+ assessments; protection measures roughly halve reoffending, but 247+ assessed women have still been killed since 2007, and audits are refused.

4 million+ assessments
Risk assessments logged (2007-present)
100,000+ women
Protected women with case histories held (2007-present)
~83 %
Active cases classified low or negligible risk (mid-2020s)
~92,000 cases
Active cases (approx.) (mid-2020s)
247+ women
Women assessed by VioGen killed by a partner since 2007 (2007-present)

Details

Maturity
Established
Promoter
Ministerio del Interior — Secretaría de Estado de Seguridad
Period
2007–present (VioGén 2 rollout 2023–2025)
Region (NUTS)
ES
Keywords
public safety, policing, judiciary, social services

Context

Created under Spain's 2004 Comprehensive Protection Law Against Gender Violence, the VioGen system went live on 26 July 2007 as a single national platform where police, courts, prisons and social services jointly track every reported case of intimate-partner violence.

Objectives

Officers use a standardised risk-assessment questionnaire (VPR) to classify each case as negligible, low, medium, high or extreme risk, triggering a matching level of police protection, monitoring and inter-agency coordination.

Activities

The protocol has undergone multiple revisions, most recently VioGen 2 in 2025, which removed the lowest 'no risk' category and added new risk indicators.

Results

The system has now logged more than 4 million risk assessments and holds case histories for over 100,000 protected women, and reviews of the underlying VPR protocol published in the Spanish Journal of Legal Medicine report that assigned police-protection measures are associated with roughly halving reoffending among monitored cases.

Conclusions

The record is genuinely mixed: as of the mid-2020s roughly 83% of the system's ~92,000 active cases were classified low or negligible risk, and at least 247 women assessed by VioGen have been killed by a partner since 2007, while the government has declined to release comprehensive effectiveness data or allow independent audits of the risk algorithm.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Medium (€50k–€500k) — No published data compares VioGen's resourcing or per-case cost against alternative risk-management approaches.
Time to results
Long (> 3 years) — Live since 26 July 2007 under the 2004 Comprehensive Protection Law; most recent protocol revision, VioGen 2, in 2025.
Staffing & skills
Police officers apply the standardised VPR questionnaire; courts, prisons and social services jointly access and act on each case record.

Conditions for success

  • Periodic protocol revisions, most recently VioGen 2 in 2025, which removed the lowest 'no risk' category and added new risk indicators.

Common failure modes

  • At least 247 women assessed by the system have been killed by a partner since 2007.
  • The government has declined to release comprehensive effectiveness data or allow independent audits of the risk algorithm.
  • Roughly 83% of active cases are classified low or negligible risk, raising questions about calibration.

Where it fits

Governance type
national interior-ministry system
Scale
national
Income level
high-income

Commonly funded by

National / regional programmes

Indicative funding routes for practices of this type — always check each programme's current calls and eligibility rules.

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Data sources

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

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