Violence against women is a specific example of a more general failure in effective response to interpersonal crime by the police. Research demonstrates the ways in which women's lives are controlled by the threat or reality of men's violence. Violence and its threat are ugly and crude means of securing control or dominance and may be used by individual men to control or punish individual women who challenge or are seen to be challenging their authority. Strategies to confront men's violence in Western societies have actively promoted alternatives for women to escape violence, but many women have no option but to turn to the police following an attack. For this reason, there is continuing concern about the policing of men's violence towards women and the lack of perhaps more understanding female police in many forces.