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The Home Office's consultation paper on domestic violence, published this summer, put forward several measures to better protect individuals from domestic violence (see "Up in the air", page 26, 4 September). More education and awareness training, making common assault an arrestable offence, and making it a criminal offence to breach an injunction.

One of the more innovative features is the idea of a domestic violence register, which would include names of offenders known to have been violent in the past. Once on the register the offenders would be required to notify the police when they moved and the contents of the register might be shared with health care professionals and social services staff.


The model is based on that of the sex offenders register, and for those critics - admittedly not very many - who argued against the sex offender register on civil liberty grounds, it will confirm one of their fears: "Sex offenders today - but who will be next?"

Whether registers will be used for other forms of offending will remain to be seen, but registers already form a staple diet for contemporary social work. Mostly they are accepted without question.

We register children where there are child protection issues, childminders, foster parents and private children's homes. We register children who are disabled and children and adults who are blind. We have a National Adoption Register. We register nursing homes, social care homes, day nurseries and other domiciliary and day care services in the private sector. The General Social Care Council is now charged with registering all social workers and social care workers.


But do registers reduce risk? How many social workers have left a conference having put a name on the child protection register feeling that it is not going to make a bit of difference. How many millions of pounds are spent annually on the upkeep of registers that hardly anyone consults in the way they were supposed to?

Only the mental health service has been decisive enough to dismantle a register. The mental health supervision register hastily designed in 1994 to help track patients in the community was wound up in 2000, having proved more trouble than it was worth.

Now, yet another register is being proposed. It seems that as long as we can mark ourselves off from "the others", we can justify a new register.

Terry Thomas is reader in social work at Leeds Metropolitan University.