At Scottish Women’s Aid (SWA), we have long been aware of the rise in police-recorded domestic abuse around Old Firm games, and we welcome Police Scotland’s commitment to proactive policing and to preventing crime. We have some significant anxiety, however, about the current initiative in Glasgow and about the messages coming from both police and media about domestic abuse and its relationship to football. A focus on police-reported “incidents” at one point in time misrepresents domestic abuse as we define it in Scotland, as offenders perpetrate it, and as women and children experience it.

Domestic abuse is not an incident. Domestic abuse is not triggered by anger, by alcohol, by poverty, by hooliganism, by sectarianism. Domestic abuse is an ongoing pattern of control, of threats, of fear, of micro-management of women and children’s everyday lives. Living with domestic abuse is a 24/7 experience. Before, during, and after Old Firm games.