Paper Title
Perspectives On South African Police Service’s Policing Of Domestic Violence In The Witbank Policing Area

Abstract
The criminalisation of domestic violence refers to efforts to address domestic violence through the local law enforcement of criminal and civil laws. Using data from a sample of 30 participants comprising of police officials and victims of domestic violence from the Witbank policing area, this paper sought to: determine how policing has been conducted on domestic violence challenges, determine how domestic violence cases were handled by the police and the challenges faced by the police in domestic violence related cases. Semi-structured interviews and the analysis of case dockets were utilised as a means of collecting information.The findings indicated that the overall police response to victims of domestic abuse was not adequate and the local police needed to take decisive action to rectify the identified challenges.It also emerged from the findings that the domestic violence related cases were registered wrongly on the Case Administration System (CAS) and none of the inspecting managers could identify the fault.Based on the research findings, the recommendations were suggested to guide the police officials at the station on how to respond adequately. Keywords - Domestic Violence, Intimate Partner, Mining, Police, Victimisation.