It is just past dawn on a winter's morning and police officers are gathered in the landing of a high-rise block of flats in the west of Scotland. One of them is holding a "ramit", but this time the door is not battered down because the suspect answers. He is shown a warrant, which he must not touch. The man is told he is being investigated for domestic abuse – he laughs.

But in Scotland domestic abuse is taken seriously. The groundbreaking Domestic Abuse Task Force that arrested the laughing suspect was launched in Strathclyde, a force area now merged with eight others into the unified Police Scotland. An elite unit of investigators, it was the first team of its kind in the UK to specifically tackle domestic abuse in the same way that detectives would a homicide. It took a radical approach to serious and serial domestic attackers, and aimed to stop them in their tracks by investigating all aspects of criminal lifestyle.

One of its high-profile cases was that of Joseph Loughran, 52, who was given a 15-year sentence for a 30-year campaign of violence and domestic abuse against his partners. He choked his victims, burned them with cigarettes, cut them with knives and beat them unconscious.

Now, there are three such teams in Scotland – in the north, east and west – with smaller, local domestic abuse investigation units in the 14 divisions. Police Scotland's website has an online form for reporting domestic abuse, which is prefaced with the note: "You are not to blame for what is happening to you, it is NOT your fault. Above all, you are not alone and you don't need to suffer in silence. Help is available to you."

In the wake of Her Majesty's Inspector of Constabulary's damning report exposing "alarming and unacceptable weaknesses" in the way police respond to domestic violence in England and Wales, force chiefs may want to cast their eyes across the border. In Scotland, the term "domestic violence" is no longer in use and is referred to officially as "domestic abuse" because verbal attack and controlling behaviour can be used to subjugate a victim to the perpetrator's will.

As chief constable of the then Strathclyde force, Sir Stephen House was passionate about domestic abuse, speaking out about horrendous figures showing that the crime escalated in the wake of clashes between Rangers and Celtic.

Then, taking on his new mantle as chief of the new Scotland-wide force, he reaffirmed that domestic abuse was a police priority. Last Christmas, he delivered a video warning to offenders: "This is a crime. It's not a private matter. You are an offender and you will be dealt with as an offender ... The fact that it happens behind closed doors is not an escape. As far as we are concerned, if you commit domestic abuse and we find out, we will be knocking on your door and we will be taking you into custody."

House's message, though, is not just to offenders but to his officers. And it's not just his message. Prosecutors, case workers, campaigners and victims in Scotland have all fought tirelessly to keep the issue of domestic abuse on the agenda and tried to bring its perpetrators to justice.

In May 2012, I spent a few days in the small windowless room that is Glasgow's specialist domestic abuse court, one of the busiest courts in the country, set up in March 2009 after the Scottish government agreed that such violence need to be treated as a serious crime. Such courts are being rolled out across the country under the aegis of the procurator fiscal's domestic abuse unit.

When she was head of Strathclyde's Domestic Abuse Task Force, detective chief inspector Yvonne Scott told me: "There's a complete change of mindset and culture in our policing. This just wouldn't have happened in the past. There was a great mistrust of the police because we treated these crimes as 'just another domestic'. But we have come on leaps and bounds, and recognised that there are so many crimes that can go on in an intimate relationship."

Forces across the UK need to take their "behind closed doors" mentality towards domestic incidents and kick them out into the open. In its report, HMIC says not all police leaders are making sure domestic abuse is a priority for their forces. It's time they did.

• Audrey Gillan's play about domestic abuse, A Firm Hand, was broadcast on Radio Scotland