Generic personal safety applications: empowering victims of domestic violence and abuse? A practitioner lens

Bespoke and generic domestic violence and abuse (DVA) personal safety applications (PSAs) have become a popular choice for strategic crime prevention projects by those in the criminal justice sector to achieve justice through digital means as part of the wider digital justice project. These PSAs have been heralded as tools for the protection, empowerment and resilience building of victims in DVA, despite limited independent evaluations. This article explores the use of a generic PSA, which the police have adopted for rollout to victims of DVA in one region of the United Kingdom. We undertook a thematic analysis of data taken from a roundtable and three follow up focus groups with practitioners from the police, criminal justice, DVA specialist sector and victim services, alongside the PSA development team. We found both some support for using this PSA and serious concerns regarding its use in DVA situations.Key messagesThere are limits to the use of generic personal safety applications in domestic violence and abuse support including, risks of entrapment through technological affiliated abuse, reinforcing victim stereotypes, and being financially inaccessible to victims of domestic violence and abuse.Independent evaluations are integral to avoid organisational responses where generic personal safety applications may be ineffectual, or escalate danger by failing to facilitate victim safety.