Manifestos come and go but women continue to be murdered by men they know in grotesquely high numbers. According to the Times, the Conservatives are set to crack down on femicide in their manifesto, with the minimum sentence for murders that take place in the home raised from 15 to 25 years. Will this make any difference?

Of the 590 recorded homicides in England and Wales alone in 2022-23, 174 of these were women – with a significant proportion murdered by their partners in their homes. There is something undeniably horrifying about these deaths. The women, often killed by knives, die in a familiar surrounding where they should expect to be safest, at the hands of men who might have loved them once, but who are now consumed with murderous rage.

While the change is powerfully suggestive – the sort of action manifesto writers love – it is unlikely to make any difference to the death toll

So this proposal to increase the starting point for offenders convicted of such murders looks just. It would also end a ludicrous legal anomaly where convictions for those who bring a knife to a murder are judged more harshly than those who grab their weapon from a rack in their kitchen.

But while the change is powerfully suggestive – the sort of action manifesto writers love – it is unlikely to make any difference to the death toll. There is no evidence I know of that male........

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