Domestic Abuse Will No Longer Disappear Behind the Offence: What the New Court Flag Really Changes

The change in one paragraph

Section 6 of the Sentencing Act 2026 has inserted section 56A into the Sentencing Code.

Where a criminal court is passing sentence and considers that the offence involved domestic abuse carried out by the offender, the court must state that fact in open court.

The Criminal Procedure Rules require that view to be recorded in the court record.

The measure came into force on 5 October 2026 and applies only in the criminal jurisdiction.

Eight things to understand first

1. This is a judicial finding of domestic abuse.
It is made by the sentencing court where the court considers that the offence involved domestic abuse carried out by the offender.

2. It applies to the domestic-abuse context, not just offences with “domestic abuse” in their title.
That matters because many domestic-abuse cases are prosecuted as assault, criminal damage, harassment, stalking or another underlying offence.

3. The court must say it in open court.
It is not simply an administrative tag added silently afterwards.

4. The finding must be recorded.
The Criminal Procedure Rules now expressly require the court record to include the announcement.

5. It is not a new criminal offence.
The reform does not create an offence of “domestic abuse”.

6. It is not itself a new aggravating factor.
Existing sentencing principles and offence-specific aggravating factors continue to apply.

7. It does not automatically increase the sentence.
The statutory purpose is consistent identification and recording.

8. It does not identify every domestic-abuse perpetrator.
It operates at criminal sentencing. Abuse which is never reported, charged or prosecuted will not magically appear in the system because this marker exists.

What exactly has changed?

The legal mechanism is called a Judicial Finding of Domestic Abuse.

Section 6 of the Sentencing Act 2026 inserted a new section 56A into the Sentencing Code.

The statutory test is relatively straightforward.

The provision applies where:

• a court is passing sentence for an offence; and
• the court is of the view that the offence involved domestic abuse carried out by the offender.

Where those conditions are met, the court must state in open court that the offence involved domestic abuse carried out by the offender.

The Criminal Procedure Rules were amended at the same time.

Rule 5.4 now requires the court record to capture:

any view announced by the court when passing sentence that the offence involved domestic abuse.

The sentencing procedure rules for magistrates’ courts and the Crown Court were also amended to reflect the new duty.

This is therefore not simply policy guidance.

It is now part of the statutory and procedural framework.

Why did the criminal justice system need a domestic-abuse marker?

Because domestic abuse frequently disappears inside the offence used to prosecute it.

There is no single general criminal offence called “domestic abuse”.

Domestic abuse is a context in which many different offences may occur.

Depending on the behaviour, a perpetrator might be convicted of:

• common assault;
• assault occasioning actual bodily harm;
• criminal damage;
• harassment;
• stalking;
• threats;
• controlling or coercive behaviour;
• non-fatal strangulation;
• sexual offences;
• breach of a protective order;
• or another offence entirely.

A database which records only:

criminal damage

does not necessarily tell the probation officer looking at the record months later that the damaged property belonged to an ex-partner and the conduct formed part of an abusive pattern.

A record saying:

harassment

does not necessarily reveal, at first glance, an ongoing campaign of post-separation domestic abuse.

This is why context matters.

The offence is not always the abuse

This distinction is particularly important when we talk about coercive control.

Domestic abuse is rarely experienced by a victim as a collection of neatly separated criminal offences.

It may instead look like:

• monitoring;
• threats;
• economic restriction;
• damage to belongings;
• repeated contact;
• following;
• humiliation;
• interference with parenting;
• use of children;
• sexual abuse;
• physical violence;
• or post-separation harassment.

The criminal justice process necessarily asks:

Which offence can be proved?

That is essential.

But it can also create fragmentation.

One episode becomes criminal damage.

Another becomes harassment.

Another becomes assault.

Another generates no charge at all.

The behavioural trajectory can disappear.

The new marker cannot reconstruct the entire history.

But it can at least prevent a proven criminal offence from losing the fact that it occurred within domestic abuse.

What does “domestic abuse” mean for the new finding?

The Sentencing Code adopts the definition in sections 1 and 2 of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021.

That definition is deliberately wider than physical violence.

Abusive behaviour may consist of:

• physical or sexual abuse;
• violent or threatening behaviour;
• controlling or coercive behaviour;
• economic abuse;
• psychological abuse;
• emotional abuse;
• or other abuse.

The people concerned must be aged 16 or over and personally connected within the statutory definition.

That includes current or former intimate partners and certain family relationships.

Importantly, behaviour does not have to be directed only at the primary victim.

Domestic abuse can involve behaviour directed towards another person, including a child, as a means of abusing the victim.

And the Domestic Abuse Act separately recognises children who see, hear or experience the effects of domestic abuse as victims in their own right where the statutory relationship requirements are met.

The sentencing guidance already tells courts to look beyond stereotypes

The Sentencing Council’s domestic-abuse guideline emphasises that domestic abuse can involve violence as well as controlling or coercive behaviour.

It tells courts to avoid stereotypical assumptions.

It also recognises a number of factors which can make domestic offending particularly serious, including:

• abuse of trust or power;
• victim vulnerability;
• preventing the victim reporting;
• preventing the victim obtaining help;
• forcing a victim from their home;
• impact on children;
• using child-contact arrangements to instigate an offence;
• a proven history of domestic violence or threats;
• and disobedience to protective court orders.

The new statutory finding sits alongside that sentencing framework.

It does not replace it.

What happens to the finding after sentence?

This is where the reform may have its greatest practical value.

The Ministry of Justice says the marker will be shared with relevant criminal-justice agencies and visible across:

• police systems;
• probation systems;
• and prison systems.

The intention is to give frontline professionals a clearer picture of the offender’s history.

That may assist with:

• risk assessment;
• offender management;
• identifying repeat domestic-abuse perpetrators;
• appropriate interventions;
• licence planning;
• victim protection;
• and future data analysis.

This is particularly important in a system where different agencies may encounter different fragments of the same person’s behaviour.

A marker cannot make agencies communicate well.

But it can make an important piece of information easier to see.

Is this really “all domestic abusers named and shamed”?

No.

That makes a striking newspaper headline.

It is not an accurate description of the legal measure.

The reform does not create:

• a public register of everybody accused of domestic abuse;
• a public database of all domestic-abuse perpetrators;
• a finding against somebody merely because an allegation has been made;
• or a mechanism for identifying every person who has committed domestic abuse.

The statutory duty arises when a court is passing sentence for an offence and is of the view that the offence involved domestic abuse carried out by that offender.

The court must state that view in open court.

That is significant.

But it is not the same thing as the state publishing a searchable “domestic abuser register”.

What the new domestic-abuse marker does not do

This is where expectations need to be realistic.

It does not capture abuse which never enters the criminal justice system

Domestic abuse remains heavily under-reported.

If behaviour is never reported, investigated or prosecuted, there is no sentencing hearing at which this finding can be made.

It does not capture every reported allegation

An allegation which results in no charge or no conviction does not automatically generate a judicial finding under this provision.

It does not prove an entire relationship history

The finding concerns an offence being sentenced.

It should not be treated as a judicial determination of every allegation ever made between the parties.

It does not create a new offence

The person remains convicted of the underlying offence.

It does not automatically increase sentence length

Existing sentencing guidelines continue to govern sentence.

It does not replace professional risk assessment

A marker tells professionals something significant about context.

It does not by itself determine current risk, protective measures or what intervention is required.

And it is not a Family Court finding

The Ministry of Justice expressly says the Judicial Finding of Domestic Abuse applies only in the criminal jurisdiction.

Why this matters for coercive control: systems lose patterns when they store incidents

This is the point I find most important.

Much of the difficulty in recognising coercive control comes from what happens when institutions break a relationship down into individual events.

A threatening message may look minor.

A damaged phone may look like criminal damage.

Repeated appearances outside a workplace may become stalking.

Interference with finances may be treated separately again.

One incident may be prosecuted.

Several others may not.

But the victim experiences the pattern.

Risk frequently exists in the pattern.

And future professionals making decisions need enough information to understand that context.

This is why I have written repeatedly at JSH Law about moving:

from incidents to trajectories.

A domestic-abuse marker is not a behavioural trajectory analysis.

But it helps preserve a category which would otherwise be lost once the conduct becomes an offence code.

Pattern recognition cannot work if the system repeatedly strips the pattern from the record.

The real test will be whether the marker changes risk management

A flag is useful only if somebody responds to it.

The most important question is therefore not:

“Was the box ticked?”

It is:

“What changed because professionals could see it?”

That might include:

• better information for probation assessments;
• more informed licence planning;
• recognition of repeat domestic-abuse offending;
• targeted perpetrator interventions;
• stronger victim-safety planning;
• better decisions about monitoring;
• and better analysis of reoffending.

Dame Nicole Jacobs is right to emphasise the data point too.

You cannot meaningfully understand the scale of domestic abuse inside a justice system if the system cannot reliably identify the cases in which it is present.

There is a particularly important early-release context

This reform has not arrived in isolation.

The Government is simultaneously implementing major sentencing and offender-management reforms.

The Domestic Abuse Commissioner has recently warned that many domestic-abuse perpetrators remain eligible for early release and has raised concerns about the protections available to victims when offenders leave prison.

In that context, accurate identification becomes even more important.

If probation, prisons and police are expected to assess and manage risk effectively, they need to know that apparently generic offending occurred within domestic abuse.

But again, identification is not protection by itself.

The marker has to lead to:

• competent assessment;
• information sharing;
• appropriate conditions;
• monitoring;
• specialist intervention;
• and a response when risk escalates.

Children cannot be treated as incidental to the domestic-abuse context

The Domestic Abuse Act 2021 recognises children as victims in their own right where they see, hear or experience the effects of domestic abuse and are related to the victim or perpetrator within the statutory framework.

The Sentencing Council also specifically identifies the impact on children as an aggravating consideration relevant to domestic-abuse sentencing.

That is important for family justice.

A criminal offence may appear, on paper, to have been committed against one adult.

The consequences may extend far beyond that adult.

Children may:

• witness violence;
• hear threats;
• experience instability;
• be used as messengers;
• become involved in monitoring;
• experience changes to home or schooling;
• be frightened during handovers;
• or live with the emotional consequences of the abuse.

The Family Court cannot safely treat abuse between parents as though it sits in an adult-only compartment.

What does the new criminal marker mean for Family Court proceedings?

Potentially something important — but not automatically.

The new Judicial Finding of Domestic Abuse belongs to the criminal justice system.

It does not amend PD12J.

It does not itself become a Family Court finding.

And the legislation does not create an automatic pipeline under which every criminal marker is simply transferred into every relevant private-law children case.

However, criminal convictions can already be evidentially significant in civil proceedings.

Under section 11 of the Civil Evidence Act 1968, a subsisting criminal conviction is admissible in civil proceedings for the purpose of proving, where relevant, that the person committed the offence.

The person is taken to have committed the offence unless the contrary is proved.

In private children proceedings, PD12J then requires the Family Court to address domestic abuse properly where it is:

• alleged;
• admitted;
• found;
• or otherwise established.

The Family Court must ultimately consider what established abuse means for:

• the child’s welfare;
• past harm;
• future risk;
• contact;
• the safety of the child and non-abusive parent;
• and the ability of the adults involved to understand the effect of the abuse.

So where a relevant criminal conviction and domestic-abuse finding exist, they should not be casually ignored.

But neither should a litigant assume that the criminal marker automatically answers every separate welfare question before the Family Court.

There is an uncomfortable comparison with Family Court data

This is where the reform raises a much bigger question.

In her Everyday Business review of domestic abuse in private children proceedings, the Domestic Abuse Commissioner highlighted a significant data problem.

The research found that domestic abuse was not routinely captured in a sufficiently distinct way across Family Justice administrative data.

Under the older FamilyMan system there was no separate domestic-abuse flag.

A broader “harm” marker could indicate a safeguarding concern, but did not allow domestic-abuse cases to be reliably separated from other forms of risk.

That makes it harder to answer basic questions such as:

• How many private children cases actually involve domestic abuse?
• When is the abuse first identified?
• What type of abuse is alleged or found?
• What orders are eventually made?
• How frequently does abuse emerge after proceedings have started?
• And how consistently does the system respond?

The Government accepted in June 2026 that this information needs to be captured more effectively.

It says the developing Core Case Data system should improve administrative data and enable enhanced recording, including information about allegations of domestic abuse.

That work matters.

Because there is a simple principle here:

A justice system cannot reliably improve its response to domestic abuse if it cannot reliably identify where domestic abuse is present.

Does your Family Court case involve criminal records or domestic-abuse evidence?

JSH Law can provide defined-scope support with organising and analysing evidence relevant to private children proceedings.

Depending on the case, that can include:

• criminal conviction and order chronologies;
• domestic-abuse evidence organisation;
• pattern and trajectory chronologies;
• police-record disclosure;
• mapping allegations against source evidence;
• PD12J-focused case analysis;
• Cafcass and Child Impact Report analysis;
• witness and position statement preparation support;
• court-bundle preparation support;
• and hearing preparation.

The objective is not simply to attach records. It is to explain accurately what each record establishes, what it does not establish, and why it matters to the child’s welfare.

Book a consultation

If you are a litigant in person, do not simply write “he has a domestic-abuse flag”

This is where evidential precision matters.

If a criminal conviction is relevant to Family Court proceedings, identify exactly what exists.

For example:

This is the difference between placing a label before the court and placing usable evidence before the court.

Apply the JSH Law Six-Question Check

The JSH Law Six-Question Check is particularly useful when criminal-justice material enters a Family Court case.

Better data can expose repeat patterns which individual cases miss

The other long-term significance is systemic.

If domestic-abuse context is reliably recorded at sentencing, policymakers should eventually be able to ask better questions.

For example:

• How many sentenced offences involve domestic abuse?
• Which underlying offences most frequently occur in that context?
• How often do offenders return with further domestic-abuse offending?
• Which interventions appear to reduce reoffending?
• How often are children affected?
• What happens after release?
• Where does escalation occur?

That evidence can inform policy in ways anecdote cannot.

But data need interpretation.

An increase in recorded domestic-abuse offending could mean more abuse.

It could also mean better identification.

A fall could mean improvement.

Or it could mean worse recording.

Measurement is valuable only when we understand what is being measured.

A flag is a beginning, not an answer

I welcome this reform.

Domestic abuse should not disappear from view simply because the criminal law has attached a different offence label to the conduct.

If somebody is convicted of an offence committed as part of domestic abuse, professionals subsequently responsible for managing that offender should be able to see that context.

That is basic information required for competent risk management.

And better data should help expose something domestic-abuse practitioners and survivors have said for years:

these are often not isolated incidents.

But we should not confuse recording with protection.

The marker will succeed only if professionals:

• recognise domestic abuse accurately;
• apply the finding consistently;
• share information safely;
• understand coercive control;
• connect repeat offending across agencies;
• assess risk competently;
• and act when the information tells them somebody is in danger.

The same challenge remains in family justice.

Domestic abuse cannot be allowed to disappear into generic language such as:

conflict.

relationship difficulties.

communication problems.

Or a generic safeguarding flag which tells the next decision-maker almost nothing about what the underlying concern actually is.

Identification matters because patterns cannot be managed if institutions cannot see them.

The new criminal-court finding is therefore a meaningful step.

The next test is whether visibility becomes action.

Related JSH Law analysis

• Seeing the Pattern: What the Major Coercive-Control Frameworks Can — and Cannot — Tell the Family Court
• From Incidents to Trajectories: Coercive-Control Evidence and Behavioural Patterns
• “The Obligations Are Unchanged”: What Re C Really Says About Domestic Abuse in Child Focused Courts
• The JSH Law Six-Question Check

Primary and official sources

• Ministry of Justice — Domestic abusers to be marked and tracked in boost to victims’ safety, 5 October 2026.
• Sentencing Act 2026, section 6.
• Sentencing Code, section 56A — Finding of domestic abuse.
• Sentencing Act 2026 (Commencement No. 5) Regulations 2026.
• Criminal Procedure (Amendment) (No. 2) Rules 2026.
• Sentencing Council — Domestic abuse: overarching principles.
• Sentencing Council — Amendments made to sentencing guidelines on 5 October 2026.
• Domestic Abuse Act 2021, sections 1 to 3.
• Practice Direction 12J — Child arrangements and domestic abuse and harm.
• Civil Evidence Act 1968, section 11.
• Domestic Abuse Commissioner — Everyday Business.
• Ministry of Justice — Government response to Everyday Business, June 2026.