Our response to the government’s rape review

Since 2015/16, successful prosecutions and convictions for rape have fallen rapidly by 59% and 47% respectively. This is despite the fact that reportings of rape have increased in the same time period by 79%. In response to these poor outcomes, the Government has recently published a report which sets out its action plan for improving the Criminal Justice System’s response to rape in England and Wales.

Entitled the End to End Rape Review, the report states that the largest contributing factor to the reduction in successful prosecutions is an increase in the number of victims not supporting a prosecution. This has increased from 42% in 2015/16, to 57% in 2019/20.

Our work at Safety Net has taught us that victims of sexual violence need active engagement and support to be able to feel safe enough to provide evidence. Some of the findings in this report demonstrate that this has not been provided to them in the past, and this certainly tallies with our experience as a charity.

Whilst we welcome this review, and any efforts to improving prosecutions for rape, we are concerned by the timeframes for goals contained within the report to address some of the important issues it raises.

These include:

-       Rolling out, over the course of two years, a new operating model framework for the police which places less emphasis on the credibility of the victim and more on actively investigating and disrupting the perpetrator. We would like to see this goal achieved at an earlier date.

-       Speeding up the process by which the police are obliged to return victims’ phones within 24 hours. The deadline for this goal is set to April 2022. We would like to see this goal achieved at an earlier date.

-       Piloting the use of pre-recorded victim video evidence in 6 crown courts. We would like to see this scheme rolled out across the country.

Jo Birch, Head of Operations at Safety Net said: “Many of our clients have experienced considerable trauma as a result of rape. On top of this, if a victim chooses to move through a prosecution, they face additional trauma in terms of them being cross examined in a witness box, within sight of the perpetrator, or losing access to a personal phone for months on end. All of this compounds the effects of the initial trauma arising from the rape itself. It simply becomes too much to bear – and they drop out of the process. That’s why we’d like to see the roll out of these initiatives speeded up, so that more victims are engaged and supported, and so that justice is served and more successul prosecutions occur as a result.”