Domestic violence and the spatial-moral order of home in calls to police

Domestic or family violence ^[1] is a global problem that harms individuals, families and communities. Homicide is the most extreme example, with 12% of male homicides and 60% of female homicides committed by intimate partners or family members, making home the most dangerous place for women (UN Women, 2024). The COVID-19 pandemic cast new visibility on this enduring problem (Sweet et al., 2024). Lockdown mandates to “stay home, stay safe”, were paradoxical for those who experience physical, psychological or sexual abuse at home (Bradbury‐Jones and Isham, 2020). Premised on public/private divides and conceptions of risk that have long been critiqued by feminists (e.g. Elshtain, 1981; Sweet et al., 2024), lockdowns instituted a new form of spatial-moral order. We examine how lockdown provided new meanings for the previously ordinary activities of coming or going from home. Our focus is how callers seeking help from police about domestic violence described problems connected to home. As we show, the morality of breaching lockdown could be constructed as either a matter for police intervention or for callers to resolve on their own.

Globally, calling the police can be the first point of entry into the criminal justice system. Although institutionalised, criminal justice is built upon an everyday practical moral order (Jayyusi, 1984). In everyday social life, people manage their rights and obligations to each other, allocate blame, and make moral judgements. Descriptions of people and events are everyday practices through which this mundane morality is managed (Stokoe and Edwards, 2012). For example, Stokoe and Wallwork (2003) showed how people design complaints about neighbours’ spatial transgressions as disruptions of the socio-moral order. Certain spatial activities (e.g. talking over fences) were linked to categorisations of “good neighbours” and others (e.g. yelling in the street) were linked with “bad neighbours.” Similarly, visitors to a national park described different ways of interacting with the space that invoked categories of “good” or “bad” tourists (McCabe and Stokoe, 2004). Describing others’ conduct in space thus makes identities and moral judgements available. Likewise, describing women’s behaviour as transgressing normative gender expectations allows for moral judgements including shifting blame and tacitly justifying male violence (Wowk, 1984; LeCouteur and Oxlad, 2011). Women are aware of this and may pre-emptively account for their conduct to avoid blame when reporting sexual offences to the police (MacLeod, 2016). We extend this work by examining how the spatial-moral order of home is invoked in calls to police.

The pandemic profoundly reconfigured the moral order of social-spatial relations. Previously taken-for-granted, highly routinised social practices such as greetings (Katila et al., 2020; Mondada et al., 2020a) and purchasing (Mondada et al., 2020b; Weatherall et al., 2022) were made highly visible and deviations from what was previously “normal” and “expected” became morally accountable. New practices and norms emerged that regulated personal and social space (Drury and Stokoe, 2022). Adherence to pandemic rules become morally expected, with concerns about possible violations becoming relevant across a range of contexts (Ekberg et al., 2021). Lockdowns were another site of spatial reconfiguration. Although the nature of lockdowns varied across countries and jurisdictions, they shared a focus on home as a site of safety. Our study is the first to examine the morality of lockdown and home in social interaction. We analyse how callers described others’ behaviours as breaches of lockdown, thus invoking a spatial-moral order when seeking help from police.

Lockdowns were predicated on public/private distinctions where the private sphere of the home was (often explicitly) framed as a site of safety in contrast to the risks of public space. This discursive construction of home as safe has long been critiqued by feminists (e.g. Stanko, 1988) and concerns were raised at the time that lockdown measures would increase the risk of violence and limit opportunities for support (Johnson et al., 2020; Ali et al., 2021). Fears raised by support agencies in the early days of the pandemic are increasingly being confirmed by research documenting increased prevalence and severity of violence and decreased help-seeking during lockdowns (Speed et al., 2020; Piquero et al., 2021).

We provide an interactional analysis of how lockdown reconfigured the spatial-moral order of the home. Ordinarily, coming or going from home is not remarkable. Yet in homes where there is violence and abuse, the ability to leave or return are consequential matters associated with potential risk and danger. Under lockdown measures, movement to and from homes became newly regulated. We explore how callers presented problems associated with comings and goings from home as matters for police attention. We show how callers worked up the problematic moral nature of alleged perpetrators’ actions, and document the range of ways call-takers responded to such requests for help.

Commonsense meanings about home largely operate as taken-for-granted and are only made visible when challenged. For example, Weatherall and Tennent (2021) found how meanings associated with address were revealed in a victim support helpline. Call-takers asked for callers’ addresses for the routine institutional task of finding their casefiles in the database. Yet many victims of domestic violence were not able to straightforwardly answer. Some callers challenged the common-sense meanings of address (e.g. by describing where they were staying rather than where they lived) or accounted for their inability to answer. For many callers, their address was the location of violence against them, making this not simply an institutional matter, but directly connected to the reason they were seeking help. Similarly, Steel (2024) highlighted the juxtaposition of private and institutional space in domestic violence police callouts. In contrast to formal police interviews, where the institutional environment is designed to facilitate evidence gathering, frontline officers attending victims’ homes seek evidence of violence and abuse in the same space it occurred. Gathering evidence at the scene can require encroaching into victims’ physical and personal spaces to examine and photograph their injuries. Thus, officers face tensions in navigating broader institutional goals of progressing evidence gathering activities without retraumatising victims. Steel’s work powerfully illustrates the power relations involved in navigating these spatial dynamics when a site is at once a home and a potential crime scene.

Another way the spatial dynamics of violence at home have been examined is in relation to help-seeking. Many victims only feel safe to call when they are alone (Tennent and Weatherall, 2025). For example, a caller to a victim support line claimed that if her husband returned home, she would hang up the call (Tennent and Weatherall, 2019). This example illustrates how otherwise routine activities (e.g. someone returning home) pose risks for victims of domestic violence. Other victims manage to call for help even when perpetrators are present. One way to minimise the risks of being overheard is to disguise the action of calling. One widely publicised example was a caller who pretended to order a pizza so she could provide her address without the perpetrator suspecting. The success of this strategy relies on call-takers’ ability to recognise the call as a genuine emergency rather than a hoax (Albert et al., 2019). Other strategies include remaining silent but strategically pressing keys or answering questions as if talking to a friend (Stokoe and Richardson, 2023).

Decades of interactional studies have documented recurrent features in the organisation of calls to police (see Kevoe-Feldman, 2019 for a review). A key insight is that such calls are not merely the transmission of information but involve complex social-moral matters like callers’ identities, their basis for knowledge, and how urgency is communicated and negotiated (Atkins et al., 2024). To get help, callers must present a “policeable problem” (Whalen and Zimmerman, 1990). In some cases, this can be accomplished with a straightforward report. But in complex or ambiguous situations, more details may be required to access help (Zimmerman, 1992).

The limited resource of emergency services means that not all requests for help are granted. Call-takers act as gatekeepers who assess the legitimacy and urgency of callers’ problems. Call-takers’ first questions can project the outcome of the call. Kent and Antaki (2020) found that requests for the caller’s location project a police response, whereas questions about the relevance of the incident or legitimacy of the caller project a refusal of police action. Call-takers’ indications of doubt or hostility have been shown to result in conflict that can delay the provision of help with sometimes fatal consequences (Whalen et al., 1988; Garcia and Parmer, 1999).

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the shape of policing changed, as did the drain on resource. We analyse calls to police about domestic violence made during periods of national lockdown. We observed that behaviours which would not ordinarily be understood as police matters (e.g. a partner leaving or wanting to return home) were described by callers as policeable problems (cf. Whalen and Zimmerman, 1990). Although our analyses are specific to the context of lockdown, they highlight broader issues about home and help-seeking that continue to matter for victims of violence.

The data are calls made to police in New Zealand and the UK during the first COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020 in both countries. The data set consists of 200 calls recorded as routine police business during lockdown – 100 from England and 100 from New Zealand. Both UK and New Zealand distinguish between emergency and non-emergency lines, and our data set includes an equal number of calls from each. The UK calls were selected based on cases that met legal definitions of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021. The New Zealand calls were a random sample provided by police from calls classified as “family harm.” This is a term used by New Zealand police that includes family violence as well as other forms of family dysfunction.

Ethical approval for the research was granted by Aston University Research Ethics Committee in July 2020 (Ref:1663) and the Victoria University of Wellington Human Ethics Committee (ID: 29582) in July 2021. A research agreement between the researchers and the New Zealand Police was signed in March 2022 and between the UK police force and Loughborough University in July 2022. The data were produced by the New Zealand and UK police and provided to the research team. We had a stringent protocol to de-identify call recordings. Vetted members of the research team digitally edited sound files on site to redact identifiable information. De-identified call recordings were checked by Police before being released to the research team. The data were then stored on university password-protected encrypted drives which are only accessible to members of the research team.

We used discursive psychology and conversation analysis to examine how descriptions invoked the spatial-moral order of lockdown and home. Discursive psychology illustrates how descriptions of people and actions construct versions of reality that support participants’ ongoing actions (Potter, 2020). We used conversation analysis to examine how descriptions of movements to and from home were constructed as spatial transgressions and connected to moral judgements (cf. Stokoe and Wallwork, 2003; McCabe and Stokoe, 2004).

Recorded calls to police are a form of naturally occurring data, which is an essential part of conversation analysis (Potter and Humă, 2025). We used Jefferson’s (2004) transcription conventions to capture features like overlapping talk, raised volume, intonation, and speed as well as the words spoken. These features are important ways participants accomplish actions and understand one another (see Hepburn and Bolden, 2017).

We repeatedly listened to sound files and viewed transcripts to identify cases for analysis. We initially included all cases where participants made explicit reference to lockdown or the pandemic (n = 48). Through the process of unmotivated looking (a fundamental principle of conversation analysis), we noticed that the matter of space and movement was relevant for participants. We thus narrowed our focus to cases where callers discussed movements to and from home (n = 26). We focused on call openings in which callers first explain the problem and why they are calling. Rather than applying analysts’ categories to code interactions (e.g. Elms et al., 2024), we adopted an inductive approach to examine participants’ orientations to the moral matters associated with lockdown and home. Our focus was how callers constructed movement to or from home as a transgression of the spatial-moral order of lockdown. We examine how these descriptions made moral judgements available and how call-takers responded.

Although our study draws on data from two national contexts, our work is not intended to be comparative in the traditional sense of comparative qualitative analysis (e.g. Ragin, 1998). Instead, we focus on an interactional practice that occurs across the data sets: describing (ex)partners movements to/from home as transgressions of lockdown. The extracts we analyse below are indicative of the practices rather than generalisations of the contexts. Globally, people encounter the same organisational issues in presenting their problems to get help and draw on generic interactional resources to solve them (Sidnell, 2009). We illustrate how the spatial-moral order functions as one resource to build requests for police assistance.

We analyse how callers describe others’ movements to and from home as policeable matters. We show how the spatial-moral order of lockdown was a resource to build otherwise innocuous behaviours (like leaving the house) as transgressions that legitimated police intervention. These behaviours not only breach lockdown orders but can be a form of domestic abuse by exposing partners and family members to the risks of the virus. We also analyse the different ways call-takers respond to such descriptions. Extract 1 is a clear case where the caller complains about her partner’s disrespect of the lockdown. The call-taker strongly aligns with the caller on both the moral and policeable nature of the situation. Extract 2 similarly involves a complaint about an ex-partner breaching lockdown. However, the call-taker does not align with the caller’s stance on the moral and policeable nature of the problem. Although they do eventually treat the description as a policeable matter, this takes much longer. By contrast, Extracts 3 and 4 are cases where call-takers deny the relevance of police intervention. In these cases, call-takers treat the spatial-moral order of lockdown as the callers’ responsibility.

Extract 1a is the opening of emergency call where a triage operator (TR in transcript) briefs the call-taker (CT) before connecting the caller. Our focus is how movement from home is built by the triage operator and later the caller (CA) as a policeable problem.

The triage operator informs the call-taker that the caller is “currently arguing” (line 9) with someone who “sounds like” her partner (line 10). The call-taker’s response “oh okay,” (line 11) treats this description as a legitimate reason for an emergency call and sufficient to progress the interaction. However, the triage operator continues speaking, overlapping the call-taker’s turn to produce additional description. That description highlights the partner’s behaviour – “wanting to leave the house” (line 12) – as a relevant detail.

A partner wanting to leave the house is not normally a matter for the police (unless of course, an abusive partner was preventing it). However, in the context of lockdown, such movement was restricted and thus morally accountable. The use of “obviously” (line 13) invokes this shared commonsense knowledge. The call-taker treats this as understandable and requests to be connected to the caller (line 14). Thus, in Extract 1a, lockdown is tacitly invoked to render an otherwise ordinary activity (wanting to leave the home) as relevant for police intervention.

When the call-taker is connected to the caller, they first ask for the address. We rejoin in Extract 1b where they ask for the caller’s own description of the situation (line 1). The caller explicitly describes her partner’s actions as a breach of the spatial-moral order of lockdown. We show how the call-taker aligns with this moral framing and affirms the situation as a policeable problem.

The caller complains that her partner “just thinks he can (.) up and leave when he feels like it” (lines 3–4). At other times, this might be considered a reasonable assumption. Yet the caller makes explicit that her partner’s attitude is at odds with “what the (.) prime minister’s been saying” (line 5). The common-sense marker “you know” (line 4) presents this as shared knowledge (Stokoe, 2012). Indeed, the call-taker displays her understanding (line 7) before the caller explicates the directive to “stay at home” (line 6). The caller thus describes her partner’s conduct as a breach of the spatial-moral order of lockdown. Although the caller merely describes what her partner “thinks” (lines 3, 10), this attitude to lockdown is presented as a moral transgression.

The call-taker aligns with the caller’s moral stance. She explicitly affirms that the caller “did the right thing giving us a call” (lines 11–12) which legitimates the situation as a relevant police matter. She formulates the mundane activity of wanting to “leave the address” (lines 14–15) as conduct that would “break the lockdown.” (lines 15–16). This highlights both the argument between partners and the nature of the dispute itself (leaving the home during a national lockdown) as a policeable matters. The policeable nature of the situation is confirmed when the call-taker later moves to arrange a police call-out.

In Extract 2a, the caller likewise presents movement to and from home as moral transgression. However, the policeable nature of the behaviour is less clear. The call is to a non-emergency police line and in their initial request, the caller asks for advice rather than a seeking immediate police intervention. Although the caller invokes the spatial-moral order of lockdown, the call-taker’s lack of uptake indicates they do not treat the situation as policeable. The extract opens as the call-taker seeks details about the situation.

The caller uses a long narrative to present the complex situation that has led him to seek advice from police. He begins with the fact his ex “decided to move out” (line 9) while he remains in the house. The relationship breakup can be inferred as the reason for the separation. As it happened “before the covid nineteen” (line 8), such movement is unremarkable. The caller marks a contrast with “but now” (line 13) when her attempts to “come back and kick me out” (lines 13–14) can be interpreted differently due to the restrictions on movement. The caller uses active voicing, “I said to her please stay put,” (lines 14–15) to show his attempts to resolve the problem himself without need for police intervention. His reported speech includes an explicit formulation of the rules – “you’re not allowed to move around.” (lines 15–16) – and an account that invokes the risk of spreading “the disease” (line 17).

However, the caller then reveals that his ex has already broken lockdown when she “came here last week,” (line 19). He again uses active voicing, this time on behalf of their children: “mum .h stay where you are.” (line 22) to recruit them into the local management of this issue. He upgrades the prohibition on movement by formulating it as “the law of uh covid nineteen” (line 23–24). This description suggests that his ex’s spatial transgression is breaking the law by failing to follow the lockdown rules. The call-taker does not respond at line 26, and so the caller returns to and upgrades the present problem. He formulates her emotional state as “mad” (line 27) and increases the immediacy of her action as “driving over now” (line 28). The caller acknowledges there is “a problem” (lines 29–30) which may refer to who has rights to the house (and children). However, he treats the proper time to resolve this as when “covid nineteen is over.” (line 31). Within the context of a relationship breakup, movement to and from the home (and who has rights to be there) are largely treated as civil matters (although police involvement is relevant in cases of family violence). Yet in the context of lockdown, any movement to or from the home (regardless of other rights to the property) was prohibited.

After another place where the call-taker could respond by doesn’t (line 32), the caller pursues a response by formulating his ex’s conduct as a violation of “the covid nineteen law and stuff,” (line 37). The inclusion of the term “law” works to make this a relevant matter for police attention. However, when the call-taker does respond, it is to enquire about the previous visit (lines 39–40). The caller clarifies their concern is the imminent problem of his ex-partner “driving over here now” (line 42). These turns illustrate the misalignment of the participants’ concerns. The call-taker goes on to ask for the address and whose name is listed on the lease of the property (not shown). After two further minutes of details-gathering, the call-taker puts the call on hold to confer with a supervisor. In Extract 2b, they return to the call and announce they will contact local officers, as the matter is finally deemed to be policeable.

The call-taker announces they will “put something through” (line 2) to local officers which shows they are now treating the matter as relevant for police intervention. The request for confirmation, “so she’s coming (.) o:ver: (.) no:w” (line 4) can be understood as part of the description that will be passed to the officers. Notably, this identifies the immediacy of the problem as relevant (rather than the call-taker’s initial focus on the past incident shown in Extract 2a). At five minutes into the call, this announcement of service comes much later than Extract 1. Although arguably “delayed” it nonetheless shows the call-taker treating the caller’s problem as police-relevant.

This section has shown how descriptions of (ex)partners’ movements to and from home were worked up as policeable problems during the pandemic. In Extract 1, the call-taker aligns swiftly with the caller’s presentation of a policeable problem and the moral status of the spatial transgression. In Extract 2, the call-taker treats the problem as relevant for police, but this takes much longer. By contrast, the next section presents cases where breaches of lockdown are not treated by call-takers as relevant for police intervention.

Extract 3a is the opening of a call to a non-emergency line. Although the caller describes her husband’s actions as a clear breach of the spatial-moral order of lockdown, she displays uncertainty about whether it is a policeable problem. This is later confirmed in Extract 3b where the call-taker treats the problem as her personal responsibility.

The caller is seeking “information as to uhm what I need to do.” (line 4) which displays her understanding that the problem lies within her domain of responsibility. Although the matter has some relevance for police, she is not requesting a call-out or more direct forms of assistance.

She describes the problem as the fact her husband “<has now> decided to le:ave to a hotel? for a night?” (lines 8–9). This otherwise ordinary activity is problematic in the context of their family “staying ho:me for the last three weeks,” (line 6) under lockdown orders. Adding the detail that he “left with a backpack” (lines 11–12) suggests his return is not imminent. After no uptake from the call-taker, the caller invokes the spatial-moral order, claiming her husband has “broken our lockdown” (line 14). However, this is designed as a subject-side assessment (“I feel like” line 14) which expresses a tentative personal opinion rather than a strong claim (Edwards and Potter, 2017).

There are multiple places where the call-taker could respond but chooses not to (lines 10, 13, 15, 21). In helpline contexts, call-takers often wait until callers produce an upshot of the problem before moving to respond (Bloch and Antaki, 2019). Here, the call-taker similarly waits until the caller formulates the upshot “So I don’t know what to do if he decides to come back” (lines 22–23) before responding. Notably, this upshot marks the possibility of the husband’s return as the caller’s concern. However, the call-taker seeks further details about the incident, showing that they have not yet understood the problem as policeable (cf. Kent and Antaki, 2020). Rather than attending to the caller’s stated concern, the call-taker asks why he left (line 26). The caller answers after a long silence (line 27) with the minimised description “jus’ a bit of an argument, really” (line 28). Although this can be understood as a disclosure of violence (cf. Extract 1), the call-taker does not orient to this here.

In a short section not shown, the caller makes explicit that she does not want her husband to return due to the risk associated with the virus and her children. The call-taker then places the caller on hold. When they return, they inform the caller the problem is not a matter for police intervention.

The call-taker informs the caller that “all the hotels are shut at the moment” (lines 3–4) which suggests her husband will not be able to find accommodation there. This treats the husband’s stay at a hotel as the relevant matter, rather than the caller’s concern with the risks of his possible return. The call-taker next informs the caller that “it would be down to you.” (lines 6–7). This locates the problem in her domain rather than the police’s. The call-taker claims she is “obviously allowed to let him in” if he returns (line 8), invoking the common-sense knowledge associated with marriage and cohabitation. Thus, the call-taker does not treat the husband’s departure or possible return as a policeable problem. Only if a disagreement or argument occurs would the caller be entitled to “call us then” (line 11). This response largely aligns with the caller’s initial framing of the problem as within her own domain (Extract 3a), however it overlooks the health risks the caller is demonstrably concerned about for herself and her children.

A similar pattern is evident in the final two extracts presented from one call. They come from a non-emergency call where the caller is seeking help on behalf of her daughter. The caller describes how her daughter’s partner is breaching the lockdown and in doing so endangering the family. Although she explicitly formulates this as a policeable matter, the call-taker locates the problem as the daughter’s responsibility.

The caller explains that her daughter’s partner is “going out every evening (.) and socialising: (.) with people,” (lines 12–13). These otherwise ordinary activities are formulated as transgressions under the spatial-moral order of lockdown. The upshot, which is marked with “so” (line 15) emphasises the partner’s co-presence “in the house (.) with the children?” (lines 15–16). These behaviours are the reason the caller’s daughter “doesn’t want him (.) to be in the house anymo:re,” (lines 16–17). After a space where the call-taker could respond but doesn’t (line 19), the caller produces two accounts – “because of the coronavirus,=She’s worried for the children?” (lines 20–21) – that present her daughter’s position as reasonable and justified. Thus, the partner’s actions are not merely a breach of the lockdown but are endangering vulnerable members of his own family.

The caller goes on to describe how her daughter has attempted to address the problem by asking him to leave (lines 21–22). These attempts have been unsuccessful which justifies why she is now seeking institutional support – “we need to get the police out (.) to (.) remove him=actually so that he does #leave#” (lines 23–24). She further upgrades the need for police intervention by disclosing that her daughter is “a bit afraid of him” (lines 25–26). The call-taker solicits an account for why the daughter fears her partner (line 27), treating this detail as the relevant part of the caller’s description. When the caller describes the past behaviour (lines 28–29), the call-taker asks if it was reported (line 30), treating it as a relevant police matter. However, the caller explains how her daughter attempted to manage the situation herself by letting him in to avoid further damage to the property (lines 31–34). She presents this as evidence for why “she can’t do this alone.” (line 35), returning to her project of securing police intervention.

The call-taker responds by putting the call on hold. When they rejoin the call, they highlight the moral matter of the daughter’s culpability in allowing him re-entry and treat the current situation as insufficient to warrant police intervention.

The call-taker claims that the only institutional response available is to “log it for information” (lines 7-8). The reason they give is that “every time he goes out she keeps allowing him to come back in” (lines 09-10) when instead “she needs to stop him from doing so.” (line 10). This account effectively blames the daughter for allowing her partner re-entry to the home. The call-taker attends to the possibility of violence with the suggestion that an emergency call can be placed if the partner “starts to kick off” (lines 11-12). This displays the institutional position that police intervention is only warranted when violence is already occurring.

The call-taker’s final recommendation firmly locates the problem with the daughter’s domain of responsibility. They advise that she issue an ultimatum, disregarding the caller’s explanation of why such attempts have failed in the past.

The callers in Extracts 3 and 4 have called the non-emergency line for advice, much like the caller in Extract 2. Although they invoke the spatial-moral order to formulate others’ conduct as transgression of lockdown, call-takers advise that the problem is not relevant for police intervention. Instead, call-takers formulate the situation as a personal problem and suggest police action would only be warranted when an active disagreement occurs.

We have shown how callers seeking help from police invoked the spatial-moral order when describing movements to and from home as breaches of lockdown. Previously unremarkable activities like leaving or returning home were described as disrespecting government directives (Extract 1), breaking the law (Extract 2) or endangering family members (Extracts 2, 4). These descriptions were built to show others’ irresponsible or dangerous moral character, often in contrast to callers’ own moral positions as responsible rule-followers (e.g. Extract 2, 3). Thus, describing others’ spatial transgressions invoked moral judgements. In the context of calls to police, these moral matters are connected to establishing the problem as a relevant police matter.

However, not all descriptions of lockdown breaches were treated by call-takers as policeable problems. The two cases where a response was granted were “live” situations where the breach was imminent but had not yet occurred. In Extract 1, the call-taker explicitly aligned with the callers’ moral position as well as granting an institutional response, whereas in Extract 2, the call-taker maintained a neutral stance. By contrast, previous breaches (Extract 4) or the possibility of a future return (Extract 3) were treated as beyond police jurisdiction. In these cases, call-takers located the problem as a matter of personal responsibility. Call-takers advised callers they could call the emergency line if attempts to resolve the situation resulted in “a disagreement or an argument” (Extract 3) or the partner “starts to kick off and anything happens” (Extract 4). These recommendations display an understanding that only verbal or physical violence warrants policeable action. Although leaving and returning to the home poses a risk of disease transmission (which constitutes a form of harm to the family), call-takers did not orient to this as within police jurisdiction. Instead, these were treated as relationship matters (e.g. Extract 3), invoking the long association of domestic violence as a private family matter (Dobash and Dobash, 1979).

Our study provides an interactional contribution to the feminist literature on domestic violence and home. We have shown how connections between home, risk, and violence were worked up by callers in real-life calls to police. Our conversation analytic approach highlights callers’ concerns from their own perspective, which is an important contribution to feminist research (Tennent and Weatherall, 2021). Additionally, we have shown how these descriptions were responded to in different ways, illustrating the power of call-takers as institutional gatekeepers. This study advances the small body of interactional research investigating how violence is disclosed and responded to in institutional settings (e.g. Stokoe and Richardson, 2023; Tennent and Weatherall, 2019; Tennent and Weatherall, 2025). Previous studies have highlighted tensions between personal and institutional meanings of home when responding to domestic violence (Steel, 2024; Weatherall and Tennent, 2021). We have documented how movements to and from home during lockdown can similarly be understood as matters of personal or professional responsibility.

The pandemic created a moment of rupture where previously innocuous behaviours like shaking hands were newly visible as risky forms of contact (Katila et al., 2020). Interactional studies have documented how new practices for greeting, paying, and queueing were adopted and morally enforced (Mondada et al., 2020a, 2020b; Drury and Stokoe, 2022). This study is the first to examine the spatial-moral order of lockdown in social interaction. We have shown how lockdown provided a context that rendered previously unremarkable behaviours (possibly) relevant for police. Callers reporting a partner wanting to leave (Extract 1), an ex-partner returning to the family home (Extract 2), a husband leaving for a hotel after an argument (Extract 3), or a partner staying out late drinking and socialising (Extract 4) would not normally be understood as presenting policeable problems. Yet lockdown rendered these behaviours transgressions with risks of disease transmission (Extracts 2–4), and the possibility of violence when attempting to maintain lockdown and safety (Extract 1, 3, 4). Our work demonstrates that what counts as a “policeable” problem is negotiated between callers and call-takers.

To conclude, our study is unique for examining spatial-moral order in the context of lockdown, home, and domestic violence. The analyses are specific to the context of lockdown, yet highlight broader issues about home and help-seeking that continue to matter for victims of violence. Although we cannot know the experiences of those who did not call, the data offer valuable insights into the interactional dynamics of help-seeking at this time. Furthermore, our findings highlight ongoing challenges around establishing legitimacy and policeable problems when disclosing domestic and family abuse to the police. The challenges of getting help for violence are enduring issues which callers continue to face well after the pandemic has officially ended.

The authors thank the Evidence Based Policing Centre and our project collaborators Ann Weatherall and Elizabeth Stokoe for facilitating access to the data on which this paper is based.