Abuses committed on the basis of honor have soared in England in recent years. Since 2016, police forces have recorded a 193% increase in such cases. From 2020 to 2022, these crimes increased 60%, with 2,594 incidences. Honor-based offenses include forced marriage, rape, death threats, genital mutilation and assault. The Family Law Company, which has compiled these figures, points to "increased polarization" and delays in the justice system as the main causes.
The director the Family Law Company, Imran Khodabocus, warned in statements to The Guardian that the problem is that such situations "are not just rising, but getting more severe" and noted that part of the increase in statistics is due to more and more victims reporting these events, coupled with better identification of suspected criminals by police. However, Khodabocus stressed, "In cases like this, you can’t [minimize] the impact of global political and social issues. In my experience, some people are becoming more rigid in their thinking and this is creating more instances where they feel they must defend their, or their families' [honor]."
Metropolitan police recorded almost half of all honor-based offenses
The highest number of abuses were recorded by the Metropolitan police (which serves the Greater London area) as well as the West Midlands and Greater Manchester forces in this period. In fact, almost half of the offenses were concentrated in the Greater London area, where 1,213 cases were reported, 514 of them involving violence. In addition, there were two attempted murders, 32 rapes, 310 cases of forced marriage and 49 cases of female genital mutilation.
In second place were Manchester and the West Midlands, both with 729 cases. In the case of the former, there were 42 rapes, 65 assaults with bodily injury, 56 forced marriages, 104 assaults with injury and 153 cases of controlling or coercive behavior in an intimate or family relationship were reported, among other crimes. In the West Midlands, 115 situations of coercive behavior in an intimate relationship, 27 of rape, 19 of forced marriages and 90 of death threats were recorded.
Court delays catalyze honor-based crimes
Khodabocus lamented that in the courts handling these cases "there is not the same drive to clear chronic backlogs in these courts as we have seen recently in the criminal courts. This means many cases I act in are taking at least nine to 12 months to be resolved, leaving families and particularly children in a vulnerable position. For many of the cases I act in, a lack of court interpreters is also creating significant delays to cases."
The director of The Family Law Company also expressed his "surprise" at the increase in forced marriages of minors just a year after the legal age of marriage was raised from 16 to 18, precisely to combat this crime.
