Assessing the Application and Effectiveness of Risk Assessment Processes Used by the Probation Board for Northern Ireland in Domestic Abuse Cases

Domestic abuse remains a significant and complex challenge within the criminal justice system in Northern Ireland, particularly in cases involving coercive control, where harm is patterned, cumulative and difficult to capture through incident-based assessment frameworks. Probation services play a central role in managing domestic abuse perpetrators in the community, yet limited empirical research has examined how risk assessment is understood and operationalised within probation practice in this jurisdiction. This study addresses this gap by exploring how domestic abuse risk is assessed, interpreted, and acted upon by probation practitioners in Northern Ireland. Focusing on practice following the introduction of the Domestic Abuse and Civil Proceedings Act (NI) 2021, the research examines how legislative reform, organisational constraints, and structured risk assessment tools interact in everyday probation decision-making. The study adopts a qualitative research design centred on semi-structured interviews with Probation Officers responsible for assessing and supervising domestic abuse perpetrators. Interviews explore practitioner understandings of risk and harm, decision-making around intervention pathways, and the influence of resource pressures on assessment and supervision. Documentary analysis of relevant policy guidance, inspection reports, and strategic documents will contextualise interview findings. The research is developed in collaboration with the Probation Board for Northern Ireland (PBNI) and aims to generate empirically grounded insights that are practically relevant. By foregrounding practitioner perspectives and victim/survivor-informed understandings of harm, the study contributes to critical debates on ‘effectiveness’ in probation and informs future developments in domestic abuse risk management and policy.