What Is Clare’s Law and Why Does It Matter?
What Is Clare's Law and Why Is It Important?
Clare’s Law is a key safeguarding power used by UK police forces to help prevent domestic abuse and reduce violence against women and girls.
As set out in Policing Vision 2030, policing is expected to focus more strongly on prevention, protection of vulnerable people, and earlier intervention. Clare’s Law plays a direct role in delivering these priorities.
This article explains what Clare’s Law is, how it works in practice, and why it matters for modern policing, safeguarding, and public confidence.
What Is Clare's Law?
Clare’s Law, formally known as the Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme, allows police to disclose information about an individual’s history of domestic abuse where doing so is necessary to protect someone from harm.
Clare’s Law is designed as a preventative safeguarding measure, not a punitive one. Its purpose is to reduce risk, prevent escalation, and enable individuals to make informed decisions about their safety.
The Two Routes Under Clare’s Law
Clare’s Law operates through two distinct routes:
- Right to Ask – where an individual requests information about a current or former partner if they are concerned about their safety.
- Right to Know – where police proactively disclose information to a person or relevant third party when a risk is identified, even if no request has been made.
In both cases, decisions under Clare’s Law must be lawful, necessary, proportionate, and focused on safeguarding. Disclosures are tightly governed, risk-based, and subject to clear decision-making thresholds.
When applied effectively, Clare’s Law helps individuals understand risk earlier and enables police to intervene before abuse escalates into serious harm.
Why Does Clare’s Law Matter?
Clare’s Law helps prevent harm before it occurs.
Domestic abuse is often characterised by repeat victimisation, coercive control, and escalation over time. Women and girls are disproportionately affected, and many victims experience harm repeatedly before receiving effective protection.
Clare’s Law allows police forces to act on known information, reducing reliance on crisis response alone and strengthening early safeguarding.
When delivered effectively, Clare’s Law supports:
- Earlier safeguarding intervention
- Reduced repeat domestic abuse and escalation
- Increased confidence for individuals seeking protection
- Clear commitment to tackling violence against women and girls
- Greater public trust in police safeguarding decisions
Clare’s Law is therefore not just a disclosure mechanism, but a core component of preventative policing.
Book a demo to see how data and AI can speed up Clare’s Law decision-making in practice.
Clare’s Law and Policing Vision 2030
Policing Vision 2030 sets a clear strategic direction towards prevention-focused policing and stronger protection for vulnerable people.
Clare’s Law directly supports these ambitions by enabling earlier identification of domestic abuse risk and proportionate use of disclosure powers.
Under Policing Vision 2030, police forces are expected to:
- Intervene earlier to prevent harm
- Use information more effectively to protect vulnerable people
- Reduce violence against women and girls
- Improve consistency, transparency, and legitimacy in decision-making
Clare’s Law is a practical safeguarding mechanism that supports all of these priorities, translating national strategy into operational action.
Learn more about Policing Vision 2030 and the Data Foundations it Demands
How Clare’s Law Works in Practice
Each Clare’s Law application requires officers and safeguarding practitioners to assess information from several systems and sources, often within tight timescales. Relevant information may include:
- Crime and incident reports
- Domestic abuse history
- Intelligence logs
- Custody and arrest records
- Partner agency information
Safeguarding teams must then determine whether a disclosure is necessary, proportionate, and in line with legislation and safeguarding principles.
This process requires sound professional judgement, supported by accurate, timely, and complete information.
Operational Challenges in Delivering Clare’s Law
Despite its importance, many forces encounter similar challenges when implementing Clare’s Law at scale:
- Safeguarding information held across multiple systems
- Manual and time intensive assessment processes
- Limited visibility of repeat harm or escalation
- Pressure to make timely decisions under scrutiny
These challenges place significant strain on safeguarding teams and highlight the need for more consistent, efficient, and transparent workflows that support officer judgement rather than replacing it.
How Data and AI Can Strengthen Clare’s Law Decisions
Improved use of data is central to modern policing. AI can enhance (not replace) professional safeguarding decision-making by increasing consistency, reducing manual work, and highlighting risk indicators that may otherwise be missed.
Clare’s Law is one of several policing use cases where data and AI are supporting prevention, safeguarding, and operational decision making. Explore more examples in our AI use case library including predictive policing and intelligence analysis.
Recent development work within policing including synthetic crime report generation and abuse-pattern modelling shows clear benefits for Clare’s Law processes.
1. AI Generated Summaries of Domestic Abuse and Crime History
AI can synthesise crime reports, incident logs, and narrative text into clear, structured summaries for safeguarding teams to review. This reduces manual workload and improves consistency. All AI outputs from our police solutions are generated only from governed policing data and are subject to validation and testing. This prevents hallucination and ensures insights are auditable, explainable, and suitable for operational and inspection use.
2. Automated Detection of Coercive, Controlling, or Escalating Behaviour
Using policing specific patterns trained in synthetic datasets, AI can surface indicators such as:
• Coercive control
• Patterns of escalation
• Repeat harm across systems
These insights act as an early warning layer for safeguarding teams.
3. Standardised, Auditable Disclosure Documents
AI can generate draft disclosure summaries that help teams produce consistent and defensible rationale for decisions critical for public trust and scrutiny.
4. Improved Transparency for Inspection and Oversight
AI enabled workflows support PEEL expectations related to:
• Effectiveness – preventing harm and protecting vulnerable people
• Efficiency – reducing manual processing burden
• Legitimacy – demonstrating consistent, proportionate decision making
This strengthens public confidence and internal assurance.
Why Clare’s Law Matters Now
With safeguarding demand rising and scrutiny intensifying, Clare’s Law is more important than ever. It is not simply a disclosure process it is a proactive safeguarding tool that helps police:
- Intervene earlier
- Prevent escalation and repeat harm
- Protect vulnerable people
- Strengthen public confidence
- Deliver on national priorities around prevention and violence against women and girls
By combining strong safeguarding practice with improved data and AI‑enabled insight, forces can deliver Clare’s Law decisions more quickly, consistently, and transparently ensuring that vulnerable individuals receive the protection they need at the moment it matters most.
To learn more about how data and artificial intelligence are supporting policing and public safety, visit our policing and emergency services data and AI page.
See Clare’s Law in Action
Clare’s Law delivers the greatest value when safeguarding teams are supported with timely, consistent, and auditable insight. To see how data and AI can support Clare’s Law decision making in practice, book a demo of our Clare’s Law AI solution.
The demo shows how forces can improve consistency, reduce manual workload, and strengthen governance across Clare’s Law processes.
