Content Warning: This article mentions sexual harassment.

In response to the tragic death of Sarah Everard, No. 10 has announced their plans for ‘immediate steps’ forward in the improvement of safety for women in England and Wales. They plan to spend £25 million on better lighting in streets and CCTV surveillance, as well as a scheme which would see undercover officers in pubs and clubs. Following protests on Monday, campaigners have said the money is not enough from the government, and Labour has suggested that changes to the law are in dire need – much more so than plans involving ‘police officers in skinny jeans.’ I personally find it heart-breaking that it has taken so long for the issue of sexual harassment to be addressed by the government, and still there is so little change being considered. The executive director of UN Women UK, Claire Barnett, has stated that ‘this is a human rights crisis’ which ‘needs addressing now.’

The idea of assigning undercover police officers to clubs feels like a largely performative gesture to me. Following the recent figure that 97% of women aged 18-24 have experienced sexual harassment, a staggering 96% have revealed that they did not report these incidents, with a further 45% indicating that they feel it would not have made a difference. It is evident to me that women have very little faith in the justice system, so I feel it hard to justify placing officers in clubs and pubs and effectively calling it a day. The police force has been under immense pressure in recent years as it is, and so this rather blasé approach to tackling sexual harassment feels utterly hopeless. It is important to note that Metropolitan Police officer Wayne Couzens who allegedly abducted and killed Sarah Everard is currently awaiting trial. With her case kickstarting these discussions in Parliament, I find it almost offensively inconsiderate to suggest that having a few undercover officers in these settings will magically solve the issue of sexual harassment and violence. 

It is important also to recall that the relationship between women and undercover officers is not historically a successful one; I speak here in reference to the ‘spy cops’ fiasco, where officers were supposed to gather evidence that could be used to disrupt and monitor political groups. Deployments for this task lasted typically 4-5 years, which allowed the officers to form deep bonds of friendship and sometimes romantic attachments with their targets. It was revealed that at least three of these police spies fathered the children of women they had met while undercover. Forming romantic attachments with women while undercover is an obvious exploitation of power. While there was a need to conceal their true identities, I feel that these officers should have known that luring women into intimate relationships under a false identity would have extremely damaging effects on their lives. 

With multiple images and reports surfacing around the internet regarding protests in the last year for the Black Lives Matter movement, and the more recent responses to the Sarah Everard case, the hostile ways in which police forces have handled these matters again reminds women that they should be sceptical when it comes to trusting the guarantees of their safety. If officers in uniform act in this way towards bettering the lives and safety of women, how can we expect women to feel safe and trusting of officers out of uniform?

Perhaps a suggestion could be to provide further training for the staff in club venues when it comes to intervening with sexual harassment. The ‘Ask for Angela’ campaign which began in 2016, for example, provided a discreet codeword customers could use with staff if they were feeling unsafe or threatened. While this is a great idea, I personally can only recall this being advertised maybe two or three times in the bathrooms of pubs and clubs, and so the implementation of this concept may not have been as successful as we may have hoped for. While I feel it would certainly be beneficial to look at making clubs and pubs a safer environment for women, sexual harassment and assault is not a topic confined to nightlife, and so if this were the only area to see improvement in the assurance of women’s safety, it would still be a very weak and overdue approach.

I find it infuriating that women are still being advised to take precautions in an attempt to keep themselves safe. How much longer can we tiptoe around the fact that it is the men that commit these crimes that are the problem? The Sarah Everard case proves that even the women that stick to the well-lit routes, wear recognisable clothing and sturdy shoes, and make it known that they are returning home to their loved ones still fall victim to violence. Boris Johnson claims that ‘we must drive out violence against women and girls and make every part of the criminal justice system work to better protect and defend them,’ and yet he has done little more than suggest placing officers in clubs and providing extra lighting. Sexual harassment is a real and disgustingly normalised problem in our society, and for the government to suggest such a blasé, performative approach just proves that women’s safety and wellbeing is a matter far too often overlooked. 

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