Andy*, 30, a painter and decorator, says he has known violence for much of his life. “I want a relationship but I don’t know how,” he says. “I was told if you want someone else to be comfortable in your company, you first have to be comfortable in your own company. It’s hard, but I’m trying.”

He has been in and out of prison since he was a teenager. On one occasion, he was jailed when he found his then girlfriend with another man – “I saw red.” He attacked the man and bit off his ear. He says she intervened: “I grabbed her by the throat and pushed her to get her off me. She banged her head.”

Six months ago, Andy denied any responsibility for hurting his ex-girlfriend. Now, he says he was wrong and he shouldn’t have done it. Denial, minimisation and victim blaming have been established for more than 40 years as the standard male perpetrator’s response to violence towards women.

On another occasion, Andy was recalled to prison because he cheated on a different girlfriend, she confronted him and, Andy says, attacked him. No charges were brought but he was recalled. “It was my chaotic lifestyle. Always drinking, always fighting,” he says.

He served another three years and acquired a drug addiction, but is now clean. Andy has just completed an innovative 12-week programme for men who are assessed as a moderate risk to women and have expressed a willingness to change. Turning the Spotlight, (TTS), run by Cumbria Victim Support also offers help for the men’s families. The course is skilfully led by female and male facilitators, Joanne Nelson and Richard Cupid, a therapist who previously worked as an engineer in Barrow-in-Furness shipyard. “The men believe they should be ‘a man’, which causes damage and prevents them from being themselves,” Cupid says.

At the end of the programme participants are assessed on their ownership and understanding of their behaviour and why change is required. “The course has been massive for me,” Andy says. For the first time, this month he has completed his licence in the community without recall to jail.

“Women bear so much pressure,” Laraine Carr, TTS coordinator, says. “They are told to leave. If they don’t leave, they risk their children being put into care. If a couple want to make the relationship work, and many do, we need to make that possible if we can, in a safe way.”

Data drawn up by the Femicide Census, founded by Karen Ingala Smith and Clarrie O’Callaghan, covering the period 2009 -2018, found at least 1,419 men killed 1,425 women in the UK in the period 2009-2018. Almost half the perpetrators were known to have histories of violence against women.

Ryan Ingham, 27, killed Caroline Finegan, 29, in 2014, with “a devastating blow”. He had 23 previous convictions, many for domestic abuse. Twenty-nine perpetrators had killed previously. Gary Arthur Allen, 47, killed two women 21 years apart, in 1997 and 2018. Allen first strangled and inflicted 33 injuries on Samantha Class, 29, including driving his car over her. In 2018, Alena Grlakova, 38, also suffered multiple injuries. “The pleasure of hurting builds from the planning stage,” he told a probation officer. “Prostitutes are easy targets.”

“Too often we risk assess victims but not the perpetrators,” says campaigner Ingala Smith. “Factors such as mental ill health, addiction, loss of status, unemployment could be potential intervention points if prevention counted. We know from the evidence that it doesn’t.”

“Femicide is not just homicide of women by men,” adds O’Callaghan. “It’s about how and why women are killed and abused and how this is different to the circumstances in which men are killed.”

Frank Mullane, founder of the charity Advocacy After Fatal Domestic Abuse (AAFDA), supporting families, has quality assured more than 900 domestic homicide reviews (DHRs) for the Home Office. DHRs examine the role of agencies after a death. “Where the alleged or convicted perpetrator has mental health issues and/or addiction there are too few interventions,” he says. “If we don’t act early enough, the conveyor belt of men who abuse and kill will keep on coming.”

Wayne Couzens, the killer of Sarah Everard, unlocked the scale of largely unpunished misogyny and abuse within the police, not the only institution in which perpetrators operate. “When it comes to reports of men killing, abusing and controlling women, the passive voice prevails. Women are assaulted, women are threatened. The perpetrator has disappeared,” says. Davina James-Hanman, a specialist for over 30 years in the reduction of male violence against women. “When the victim-survivor is the only one visible, it is she who is judged, blamed, held accountable. We need to flip the switch so that instead of, ‘Why doesn’t she leave?’, we ask ‘Why doesn’t he stop?’”

In England and Wales, three out of four domestic abuse offences reported to the police resulted in no further action. Convictions have dropped 35% over five years and convictions for coercive control and rape are minuscule. Approximately 400,000 perpetrators per year cause medium and high levels of harm, yet fewer than 1% received specialist intervention that might stop the carnage. Perpetrators have a passport to offend.

Currently, a myriad uncoordinated taskforces, inquiries, initiatives, strategies and small pots of funding are flowing out of government to address male violence against women and girls. This month, the government’s first domestic abuse strategy is published that also contains a “perpetrator pillar”.

In the budget, the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, allocated £185m to tackle domestic abuse and rape, described as “a drop in the ocean”. Jo Todd, founding chief executive of Respect, a charity that has worked with perpetrators over 25 years, says: “Violence against women and girls costs £66bn a year. A £66bn problem needs a £66bn solution.”

It’s not just a question of funding and resources as the police, refuges and charities fight deep cuts, it’s also about a move from flawed risk management of victims and abusers to a serious investment in prevention.

The government’s serious violence strategy does not define domestic and sexual abuse as serious violence, even though it makes up 40% of police work. The police, crime, sentencing and courts bill contains a new serious violence prevention duty which will require a range of public bodies such the police, health, housing, education and probation to work together in a public health framework to prevent serious violence.

Violence against women and girls was not included. In the House of Lords, Tory peer Gabrielle Bertin and crossparty peers successfully included it in an amendment to the bill. Campaigners hope that by December, the government may have made what Nicole Jacobs, the first domestic abuse commissioner for England and Wales, calls “an historic shift”.

Currently, home secretary Priti Patel prefers local areas to make their own decisions about prevention strategies. Only half of 18 violence reduction units set up as the forerunners of the new duty have domestic abuse and violence as part of their strategy.

Zoe Billingham was lead inspector on the police’s response to domestic abuse for 12 years at Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services, until her tenure came to an end in September. She is now free to speak her mind as a campaigner. “Whether it’s in Cumbria or Camden, there is no excuse for such extraordinary variation in the police response to domestic abuse across the country. We have to end the postcode lottery that costs women’s lives,” she says.

Billingham’s final report on the police response to violence against women and girls, published in September, praised some improvements and innovations but it said that police needed “clearer focus, better funding, a relentless pursuit of perpetrators and a sense that these are urgent national policing priorities”.

For the report, a small number of forces were each asked to identify their five highest risk perpetrators. Thirty-four of the total of 40 men identified as repeat offenders of violence against women and girls were not being tracked by the police. Fourteen had offended against three or more women, some as many as nine; over half had been offending for more than five years.

“Why haven’t all the forces homed in on what their intelligence is telling them and taken out these high-risk offenders?” asks Billingham. “If this was organised crime you would see strongly focused covert tactics to apprehend the offender. You don’t see those tactics used for violence against women and girls. You have to ask yourself why?”

The report called for a statutory duty on all agencies to prevent such violence, including schools, health, housing and social care. “That’s the really big prize.” Billingham says. “What could be better than that? We need a joined-up strategy and a set of minimum standards. What gets measured gets done.”

Crucially, the report recommended that violence against women and girls is included in the strategic policing requirement that dictates the top priorities for all 43 police forces in England Wales along with counter-terrorism, serious organised crime and child sexual exploitation.

“That signals to chief constables and police and crime commissioners the government’s prioritisation. The broad spectrum of crimes that disproportionately impact on women don’t get anywhere near top priority,” Billingham says. “If this opportunity is squandered, we all lose.”

On a wet Tuesday evening in a community centre in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, five men, including Andy, discuss the issues they have covered during Turning the Spotlight’s previous two-hour sessions. They include “the Man Box”, the negatives and positives of how boys are taught to be men; the Power Wheel, devised in the 1980s, which illustrates the tools men utilise including isolation, intimidation, physical abuse and threats to control women; the red flags that trigger conflict; and, through role play, what a healthy, equal relationship might look like.

Nelson is also lead for They Matter, a 27-week Cumbria Victim Support pilot for high-risk men, mainly mandated to attend by the police and other agencies.

“A lot of the men we see go from 0 to 100 like a Ferrari,” Nelson says. “We help to join up the dots between thinking, feelings and behaviour. It’s about being comfortable with the uncomfortable. That’s where the anger comes out. A lot of the men are on the defensive, in attack mode. They say, it’s because of how people see them, but it’s often how they see themselves.”

Andy is now attending the six-month They Matter programme. “I witnessed domestic abuse from a young age,” he says. As a child, his mother left him with his father, taking Andy’s sister. His violent father was later jailed for the sexual abuse of his daughter.

“My dad taught me that emotions are a sign of weakness,” he says. “I wasn’t shown values towards women. When I was five years old, my dad taught me the five ‘Fs’ – ‘Find ’em, feel ’em, finger ’em, fuck ’em and forget ’em’. I used to sleep with women so I didn’t have to be on my own. Now, I want to have kids one day and a stable relationship.

“I’ve only dipped my toe in the water of all this stuff. I’ve got a lot to learn,” he says.

Respect, the charity SafeLives and the not-for-profit Social Finance, in 2016 set up the Drive Partnership, a three-year pilot programme for high-risk, high-harm perpetrators unwilling to change . Drive worked with the police and a range of agencies to disrupt perpetrators’ opportunities to abuse and control.

“Men who have experienced childhood trauma and who want to change, we can help,” Todd says. “The ones who are calculating, cold and controlling and get off on it, require a different response.”

An evaluation of the impact on 506 perpetrators and whether change was sustained over 12 months showed significant reductions in physical and sexual abuse and jealous and controlling behaviour.

In another study by the University of Northumbria, an intervention was found to have caused a 65% reduction in domestic and violent offending and a social return of £14 “saved” for every £1 spent. But programmes are scarce and the unanswered question is “does change last?”

In England and Wales only one in five women report partner abuse and one in six report sexual assault to the police. Police Scotland’s campaign Don’t Be That Guy highlights casual male sexual entitlement and underlines that it’s the responsibility of everyone to call out and act to end men’s violence against women. But that will still not be enough.

“We are only at the edges of understanding,” Jo Todd of Respect says. “Society and every institution in it has to change, otherwise the difference made will be time limited and small. We’ve yet to see those in power really willing to take on misogyny.”

“Men who harm and kill have to be held to account and assisted to change in a way that does not put women at risk,” Ingala Smith adds.

“It’s not useful to hear that perpetrators had difficult upbringings, if we cannot explain why women who were also damaged in childhood have not abused on the same scale. And then we need to act on what we have learned.”