Rape: A timeline of reform

The recent report by Dame Elish Angiolini report (2/6/15) into rape investigation in The Metropolitan Police highlights the issues in modern day rape investigation and makes a list of recommendations(See Table 1) .The report states that ”Rape is one of the most serious but misunderstood crimes and presents investigators and prosecutors with unique challenges. In its variety and complexity rape often presents difficulties far in excess of those encountered in investigating other crimes, including homicide”. This reflects the authors experience as a detective managing detective units and investigating rape in London. The Home Office Research Study in 2005 saw rape as, ‘a unique crime, representing both a physical and psychological violation’. In 2010 Baroness Stern went further, observing, ‘It is unique in the way it strikes at the bodily integrity and self-respect of the complainant, in the demands it makes on those public authorities required to respond to it and in the controversy it generates’. This article will look at these recommendations and place them in the context of 40 years of changing policy towards rape investigation, legal changes and the change in the social milieu.

Trends in Crime

There appears to be a paradox in crime figures according to two reports issued recently by the Home Office in April 2015. The recent crime figures released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show a rise in crime in the UK triggered by a rise in violent crime while the figures released by the the Crime Survey of England and Wales (CSEW) (which is based on interviews with members of the public about their experiences of crime) estimated a 7 per cent fall in overall crime to 6.9 million incidents last year. The CSEW, which questions 35,000 people in England and Wales, estimates that crime is now at its lowest level since the study began in 1981.So why have we seen this apparent discrepancy in figures? In reality the ONS figures reflect new reporting practices by the Police and it stated it could no longer approve figures recorded by the police because they were unreliable, prompting major revisions of how each force handles its figures. The renewed focus on the quality of crime recording is thought to have led to improved compliance with national recording standards, leading to proportionally more crimes reported to the police being recorded by them. Improved compliance with recording standards is thought to have particularly affected the way the police recorded crime categories of violence against the person (up 21%) and public order offences (up 14%). These rises were largely off-set by falls in the number of recorded theft offences (down 5%). In contrast to the CSEW, there was a 2% increase in police recorded crime compared with the previous year, with 3.8 million offences recorded in the year ending December 2014 (see Figure 1)