Researching Project Vigilant, a Police Response to Violence Against Women in the Night Time Economy: Reclaiming the Night?

Over the past decade, a series of national and international policy reports began to address the problem of violence against women, one aspect of this concerned domestic and intimate violence but another strand was concerned with violence against women and girls (VAWG) in public, especially in the context of the night-time economy. One report described violence against women and girls as a veritable ‘epidemic of violence against women’ (HMICFRS, 2021a). A series of police inspectorate reports fed into the development of a new cross-governmental strategy (HM Government, 2021). Project Vigilant, the focus of this evaluation, was an initiative developed by Thames Valley Police to address the issues raised by violence against women and girls in the night time economy. Subsequent to the evaluation described here, the project was rolled out to several other police force areas.