I know I’ve linked to this 2007 joint report by HM Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate (HMPSI) and HM Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) before, not just on this blog but on Comment is Free and other places as well. But that’s because it’s an important report, one I think everyone should read (yes, all 178 pages of it!). I think I’ve also got a naive hope that one day a police officer will stumble across this blog, and not just read the report, but actually take on board some of the lessons from it. Yeah I know, dream on Cath…
So anyway, without any further ado, here it is – Without Consent: A report on the joint review of the investigation and prosecution of rape offences
And here are some of the key points that came out of the review:
“The review revisited police crime recording practice in light of the huge disparities that were identified during the 2002 inspection in the way in which forces recorded and subsequently classified reports of rape. These variations had made levels of crime and comparisons across forces difficult to measure accurately.
Despite tightening up of standards under the Home Office Counting Rules (HOCR) and the introduction of the NCRS, high levels of variation across the review sites were found to persist, which reflects the national picture. The high level of ‘no criming’ was identified as a particular concern, with 31.8 per cent of ‘no crimes’ examined during the review being found to be non-compliant with the HOCR. It was concluded that inappropriate recording practices resulted from a lack of knowledge of, or misinterpretation of, the HOCR.
As ‘no crimes’ include those designated ‘false allegations’, which also fall under the ‘verifiable information that no crime was committed’ criterion, there is a danger that dilution of this criterion, which is inflating levels of ‘no criming’, is also inflating perceptions of the scale of false allegations among police officers. (Pages 9/10)
“The 2002 report concluded that inappropriate recording practices resulted from a “lack of knowledge or misinterpretation of the HOCR, as opposed to wilful manipulation of the data”, and this is echoed by the findings of this review. However, it is also the conclusion of this review that the “culture of scepticism” highlighted within A gap or a chasm? is playing a part, as evidenced by the reports resulting in a ‘no crime’ where subjective judgements had been made about the complainant’s credibility.” (Page 45)
I could go on and quote even more extensively from the report about the implications of forces wrongly categorising so many rape cases, or ‘no criming‘ them, but I’m sure you get the picture by now.
So why am I banging on about this particular issue again today? Because according to data supplied to the BBC under the Freedom of Information Act, this nonsense is still going on. In fact according to the data, the proportion of rapes dismissed as “no crime” varies between 2% and 30% depending on which police force you’re looking at:
“While Gloucestershire Police recorded 2.4% of rapes as “no crime”, the figure for Kent was 30%, three times the rate in 2009. Surrey Police’s “no crime” figure was over 20%.”
Without Consent was published in 2007, but even before that, in 2005, Liz Kelly and others had done their own review into attrition in reported rape cases – A gap or a chasm? – and come to similar conclusions:
“Analysis of the data for this study revealed that around one-quarter of reported cases were ‘no crimed’; in a proportion of detected cases no proceedings were brought. There was inconsistency in the police classification of case outcomes, particularly among those that were ‘no crimed’.” (page xi)
“The ‘no crime’ category comprises a complex layering of different kinds of cases and circumstances, many of which are not ‘false’ in the literal meaning of this term. Clearly, neither victim withdrawals nor cases where there is insufficient evidence should be included as ‘no crimes’.” (page 39)
And so on.
So why is this still happening? Why is it that six years on from A gap or a chasm? and four years on from Without Consent some police forces still appear unable to categorise rape cases appropriately? Why is there still such a huge discrepancy between forces in how their rape crime figures are recorded?
I honestly don’t know the answer to this. I could make some suggestions, mainly to do with the fact that I firmly believe far too many police officers continue to make sexist and entirely subjective judgements about the women who report rape to them – as evidenced by the disgraceful comments on the (now deleted) Inspector Gadget blog post that I quoted from in this piece – The rape debate; and because I firmly believe that we continue to live in a rape culture, where male sexual aggression is encouraged and even rewarded. But I’m not sure that’s the complete answer. It could be that there is still a lack of training around this issue for individual police officers, or a variation in the levels of training and support officers get between different police forces. Or it could be a great big mishmash of all of that and more. What I do know is that it’s time this stopped, and that it’s time the lessons from both A gap or a chasm? and No Consent were learned.
Rape Crisis England and Wales have now issued a statement on their site about this:
“The ongoing issue is about the lack of standardisation area by area, regarding police recording. It is accepted by the government, the police and opinion formers that rape is already under reported. The creation, throughout the country of specialist police teams over the last decade has led to some improvements in localised areas but has not led to significant changes for women and girls who have experienced sexual violence.
We firmly believe that the way to tackle this situation is not through the reclassification or ‘downgrading’ of sexual crimes but in an ongoing and consistent effort to ensure those throughout the criminal justice system recognise all rape as a serious, violent offence and work appropriately with women and girls who report it.”
The Rape Crisis National Freephone Helpline is open from 12-2.30pm & 7-9.30pm every day of the year: you can call them on 0808 802 9999
Too Much To Say For Myself 
I think they actively ‘no crime’ so many cases to appear to improve their dismal (and postcode lottery) conviction rates.
http://www.fawcettsociety.org.uk/index.asp?PageID=942
I pretty much entirely agree with you on this one Cath.
If nothing else (and there could be *plenty* else) there needs to be an immediate relabelling of the ‘no crime’ category. In most cases it doesn’t mean no crime occurred, it means ‘insufficient evidence to have any prospect of arrest or conviction’ which might still be frustrating and disappointing, but is far less offensive than the current description.
I’ll add that DaveSquirrel has been pretty much proved correct by the statement from Kent police today, where they stated openly that their explanation for the 30% ‘no crime’ statistic was because they’d gone back to a load of unsolved, open rape cases and decided to write them out of their statistics by belatedly ‘no criming’ them. Presumably at the time they accepted a rape had occurred, but by retrospectively ‘no criming’ they are able to remove a whole bunch of awkward unsolved cases from their books.
Must also point out that there was some relatively good news in the stats the BBC produced today. The conviction rate in cases that go to trial has risen to 71%, and the proportion of rape reports resulting in a conviction is now at 24%. People need to know this.
Well it doesn’t help that HM Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate (HMPSI) and HM Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) are no longer inspecting or auditing police responses to sexual violence.. that’s one thing. Secondly, ACPO keep rolling out their stock response (specially trained officers and squads blah blah), but I recently had sight of one of their ‘special’ training schedules, and in a two week period they have 1hr 40mins on rape trauma syndrome, 1hr 40mins on ‘memory and rape trauma syndrome’, and err… that’s it… on the impact and prevalence of sexual violence. The rest of the fortnight is taken up with stuff around forensic gathering, interview techniques, victimology etc etc… Now, anyone who works in this field would not describe that as anything like adequate to be calling themselves ‘specialists’..
AllyFogg: the proportion of rape reports resulting in a conviction is now at 24%
Sadly not. That’s the proportion resulting in a “sanction detection”, which means that either the suspect accepted a caution (!) or was charged (whether or not they were convicted). Of those charged, 18.4% are discontinued and 71.1% of the rest are convicted … which I think gives an upper boundary of 14% convicted, and potentially a lot lower depending on how often cautions are used and how many of those convictions are for lesser offences.
Aah… that makes much more sense cim, thanks. Thought it was a bit of a spectacular leap. But it is still progress.
Ally et al – this piece on women’s views on the news explains the difference between the 13% and the 6.5% conviction rate: http://www.womensviewsonnews.org/2011/09/guardian-finally-turns-in-its-feminist-membership-card/
The former is for rape, the latter for ‘sexual offences’. So perhaps not the progress we would like 😦
Agree with the writer that the guardian pushing these two stats together is a bit misleading.
Great piece as ever Cath!
And also, should have mentioned, Cath covered the 6.5% and 13% issue in her blog post the other week about the guardian reader’s editor and the mumsnet unofficial survey
This isn’t about the statistics you mentioned, more about pro-rape culture: I found your blog and needed to vent, I was just crying and wanting to rip my skin off when I read about the new re-make of “Straw Dogs”, a movie I hadn’t heard of until tonight. I looked up the original starring Dustin Hoffman and it has a rape scene in the movie where the women starts to ‘enjoy’ it, and then the husband blames his wife for provoking it to add more pro-rape culture bullshit cause it didn’t have enough I guess. And in the search for the movie I saw one blogger say that well some women really like being raped so….didn’t click on that site…
and I wanted to kill myself right then and there. How do you handle living in a culture that is pro-rape and blames the victim and not want to just cut yourself up or die? I know you probably hear this a lot but this has gotten too much for me and do you have some tips on how to protect your psyche from this constant mainstream barage other than moving to a convent (which I’m sure isn’t safe either)?
I live in the U.S. by the way and it’s just as bad here as anywhere else.
Hi gracemargaret
It is hard sometimes isn’t it, especially when it seems like everywhere you look and everything you read is promoting or endorsing a culture that we know can be so damaging.
I think sometimes you just have to turn it off, tune it out if you can. Take some time to do the things that are important to you, and things that help you to relax.
When it gets too much for me I tend to take my dog out for long walks, or lie in the bath for ages just thinking and daydreaming. Or else I spend time with my friends, people I know and trust are not going to engage in victim blaming or any other kind of rape apologia. Like-minded people who I know I can turn to for support when I need to.
And I seek out other feminist spaces on the Internet. It really helps to know that there’s a whole community of people out there who feel exactly the same way as we do, and who are doing what they can to counteract all the shite.
I hope this helps.
Cath x
Hi Cath,
Thank you so much for your response. I was really upset when I wrote that comment. It does give me hope and it definitely helps knowing that there are people here who get it and are compassionate and passionate about social justice. I have to limit my exposure to the media just for the sake of my emotional health. (That’s sad isn’t it?) It just seems to be everywhere, that movie I mentioned is a mainstream movie and I’ve seen the actors on talk shows promoting it and have to change the channel quick. It’s upsetting when people you know will support rape apologia, although sometimes they don’t even think that’s what they’re doing, they think there are some women who are so awful that it’s OK to say they deserve violence. I’ve learned to cut those people out of my life as much as possible.