Quality | 2009.06.10
Rape conviction lottery 'worsening'
• Figures show 11-fold variation in guilty verdicts
• \'Scandal\' revealed through freedom of information
The postcode lottery faced by rape victims seeking justice has worsened despite huge government efforts, with women in some areas 11 times more likely to see assailants found guilty than in others, official figures show today.
Data obtained by the equality campaigning group, the Fawcett Society, reveals that in the worst area, Dorset, fewer than one in 60 women who went to police in 2007 saw an attacker convicted of rape. Although the conviction rate rose slightly to 7% across England and Wales from 2006, the figure fell in 16 out of 42 police forces, 12 of which had a conviction rate below 5%. In Warwickshire the figure was 2.9%, and Essex, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire all had a rate of 3.1%.
The best performing area, Cleveland, had a rate of 18.1%, up from 13.2% the year before, the statistics obtained through a freedom of information request showed.
Campaigners say low conviction rates are due to failures and prejudices from the initial complaint right up to trial.
Police can be sceptical, and either dismiss the complaint or make little effort to investigate. Prosecutors might be reluctant to take a case to court where they fear the victim lacks "credibility".
The director of the Fawcett Society, Katherine Rake, said: "The appalling figures in most police force areas vividly illustrate that your outcome depends on where you live, and that\'s really not acceptable. It\'s also very worrying that rates went down in some areas.
"It is a national scandal that thousands of victims have no access to justice, and frequently face a culture of disbelief and delayed responses which may lead to the loss of vital evidence. Not getting a conviction can have a devastating impact on victims. Women deserve support, safety and justice from the criminal justice system and this is not being delivered."
Rake said the achievements of Cleveland, where almost one in five reported rapes led to a conviction, and other forces where rates went up significantly showed improvements were possible when rape was prioritised and strong leadership put in place. Rape needed to be treated with the same professionalism as other crimes and cooperation between the police and the Crown Prosecution Service was crucial, she added.
Detective Superintendent Mark Cooper, Dorset\'s director of public protection, accepted that the 2007 conviction rate of 1.6% did not "look good", but said it had risen to 8% last year. Improvements included setting up dedicated teams of specially trained officers to deal with rape allegations.
"We\'ve still got a long way to go but this is an absolute priority for us," he said.
A spokeswoman for Warwickshire police said that because it was a small county, a small change in the number of people convicted could have a large effect. "We are seeing a real improvement in the percentage of people of convicted during 2008. In percentage terms the difference is huge," she said.
Improvements included the creation of a dedicated rape investigation team in June 2008 and better training for officers responding to initial complaints.
A Home Office spokesman said the government had recently announced a package of measures to improve police investigation of rape and provide more support for victims.
A victim speaks
"When I went to police in London and told them I believed my drink had been spiked and I\'d been raped the uniformed officers were excellent. But the non-uniformed officers were unhelpful and patronising.
With hindsight, from the moment I told them what had happened and that I had reported a rape before it was as if they were trying to prove that a crime hadn\'t happened to me, instead of trying to prove it had.
They made me tell them five or six times what had happened, as if they doubted my story.
After that they didn\'t speak to me for several weeks. I was leaving messages telling them about possible new evidence but no one called me back.
I had given them my clothes but they were never sent for forensic analysis. Witnesses were not interviewed for months. Staff at the bar I\'d been drinking in called 999 to report that a man they\'d seen me with on the night of the attack had come in again, but it was never followed up.
I didn\'t find any of this out for 10 months and until then I had felt able to deal with what had happened. When I did find out, I fell apart. That\'s when the nightmares started.
No one was ever arrested. After I made a formal complaint, the original investigation was ruled to have been \'almost completely worthless\'."
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/jun/10/postcode-lottery-rape-convictions
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