How Databricks Genie Supports Clare’s law with Telefónica Tech

Clare’s Law plays a critical role in protecting individuals at risk of domestic abuse. It gives people the right to ask about a partner’s history, while also enabling police to act where there is known risk.

This is particularly important in the context of national policing priorities such as tackling violence against women and girls (VAWG), where timely and consistent safeguarding decisions can have a direct impact on outcomes.

While this blog focuses on Clare’s Law, the same platform approach can also support other disclosure schemes, such as Sarah’s Law (Child Sex Offender Disclosure Scheme), where similar challenges exist around data gathering, risk assessment, and consistent decision-making.

The challenge is not the intent of the scheme, but the process behind it.

Each request requires officers to gather information from multiple systems, review detailed incident reports, and make a judgement based on fragmented and often unstructured data. This takes time, introduces inconsistency, and can delay decisions where speed matters most.

This is where Databricks Genie, part of the Databricks platform, supports a more consistent and efficient approach.

Combined with our Clare’s Law accelerator, Databricks Genie helps forces assess risk more quickly and support better safeguarding decisions.

Read more about Telefónica Tech’s partnership with Databricks here.

The challenge behind Clare’s Law delivery  

Processing disclosure requests such as Clare’s law (and similarly Sarah’s Law) is resource intensive.

• Officers must pull together data from
• Record management systems
• Safeguarding reports
• Partner agencies
• National policing databases

They then review large volumes of narrative text to understand what actually happened in each incident.

• This creates several challenges

• High manual effort across every case

• Variability in how risk is interpreted

• Delays in processing requests

• Limited time to focus on safeguarding outcomes

In some forces, this amounts to thousands of hours of effort each year, with entire teams dedicated to processing requests.

A more structured approach to case assessment

Our Clare’s law accelerator brings this information into a single platform, creating a unified view of each case.

This allows officers to

• See all incidents linked to an individual in one place

• Understand patterns across time rather than isolated events

• Identify risk markers and escalation trends

• Reduce time spent gathering and reconciling data

This shift from fragmented data to a single view is key to improving both speed and

Databricks Genie for clearer risk assessment

Databricks Genie supports the next step by analysing and summarising case data.

Instead of manually reviewing every report, officers are presented with:

• A consolidated summary of incidents

• An overall risk level with explanation

• Key factors influencing that assessment

• A clear view of whether behaviour is escalating

For more complex cases, this makes it easier to identify patterns such as repeated incidents or increasing severity over time.

It also supports disclosure decisions by providing:

• A recommendation on whether to disclose

• The reasoning behind that recommendation

• A draft disclosure aligned to the available information

This ensures decisions are informed, explainable, and consistent across cases.

Databricks Genie as part of the platform

Databricks Genie is part of the Databricks platform. Organisations can access these capabilities within their existing environment without introducing additional tools.

For police forces this means:

This also enables forces to extend the same capabilities across multiple safeguarding workflows, including both Clare’s Law and Sarah’s Law, without duplicating systems or processes.

Governance and control in safeguarding workflows

Clare’s law involves highly sensitive data, making governance essential.

Databricks provides governance through Unity Catalog, supporting:

• Controlled access to case data

• Full traceability of how data is used

• Audit trails for decisions and outputs

The solution also includes safeguards such as removal of personally identifiable information from outputs where required.

This ensures that disclosures are handled in a controlled and compliant way, while maintaining transparency in decision making.

Extending to wider safeguarding use cases

While Clare’s Law is a key use case, the same data and AI capabilities can be applied to other disclosure frameworks such as Sarah’s Law.

Both require:

• Multi-source data aggregation

• Risk-based decision making

• Clear, auditable disclosures

By using a single governed platform, forces can standardise how these schemes are delivered, improving consistency while reducing operational overhead

Why Telefónica Tech for Databricks and Clare’s law

Telefónica Tech brings together data platform expertise and experience in policing use cases.

Our approach focuses on:

• Applying Databricks to real safeguarding challenges

• Accelerating delivery with pre-built components

• Aligning solutions with operational workflows

• Embedding governance and explainability from the outset

We work closely with Databricks to help forces apply capabilities such as Databricks Genie in a way that supports practical outcomes.

Improving consistency and speed in decision making

The combination of our accelerator and Databricks Genie supports a more structured approach to Clare’s law.

This includes:

This reduces variation between cases and helps ensure that decisions are based on a complete view of the data.

Supporting better safeguarding outcomes

The impact of this approach is not just efficiency.

It allows officers to spend less time reviewing data and more time focusing on safeguarding. It also reduces the risk of inconsistent decisions and improves transparency in how outcomes are reached.

For individuals at risk, this means faster and more informed decisions at critical moments.

Book a demo of our Clare’s Law accelerator

If you are looking to improve how Clare’s law is delivered and want to see how Databricks Genie supports this in practice, the next step is to see the solution in action.

Book a demo to see how our accelerator supports Clare’s Law and how the same platform can be extended to schemes like Sarah’s Law and wider safeguarding workflows.

Book a demo of our clare’s law accelerator or take a look at Telefónica Tech’s Police experience.

Understand how data, AI, and conversational analytics can support policing outcome.? Book a Clare’s Law demo →