Violence against Women and Girls Crime report contents

Recommendations

Info

This report also includes information on our prosecution of child sexual abuse, where we saw an increase of almost 17% in the number of convictions achieved, equating to 4,643 convictions in 2015- 16 with a conviction rate of 74.7%. Stakeholders in our VAWG External Consultation Group and the Community Accountability Forum have continued providing their support and invaluable expert advice during 2015-16. I would like to thank them for their work with us nationally, as well as the organisations that support us locally through scrutiny panels. In addition my thanks go to our dedicated VAWG Coordinators, Heads of the RASSO Units, their teams and all CPS staff who deal with these cases. We are proud of the changes we have made to the way we prosecute these offences in 2015-16 and the impact these changes have had on improving convictions. However, there is still more to be done to ensure all VAWG victims receive the service they deserve. We will continue to build on our achievements, implementing changes from the lessons we have learned and working with our partners to ensure an even better service for the victims of these crimes and our society as a whole. Alison Saunders CB Director of Public Prosecutions September 2016 2
Violence against Women and Girls Crime report The Violence against Women and Girls (VAWG) report is the ninth edition published by the CPS. It provides an assessment of prosecution performance on crimes that have been grouped together under the heading ‘VAWG’, as they have been identified as being committed primarily, but not exclusively, by men against women. The CPS addresses these issues within the overarching crossgovernment strategic framework of VAWG, recognising that victims of this group of crimes are disproportionally female. The approach acknowledges VAWG as a fundamental issue of human rights and women’s rights. The UK government has signed and ratified the United Nations call to all states to prevent and respond to violence against women. VAWG is recognised worldwide, and by the UK Government, as a form of offending where gender plays a part. As the United Nations 2 describes it: ‘Violence against women is a manifestation of historically unequal power relations between men and women, which have led to domination over and discrimination against women by men and to the prevention of the full advancement of women, and … violence against women is one of the crucial social mechanisms by which women are forced into a subordinate position compared with men’. The CPS is committed to securing justice for all victims of crimes grouped together as ‘VAWG’. To that end, we are inclusive in our approach. All our VAWG policies are applied fairly and equitably to all perpetrators and victims of crime – irrespective of their gender. Recognising that these offences can be targeted at male and transgender victims as well as female victims, the report includes total data on all perpetrators and victims, irrespective of gender. Where possible, data is broken down, in the body of the report, by gender as well as overall volumes and proportions. The report is an analysis of the key prosecution issues in each VAWG strand – domestic abuse (DA), stalking, harassment, rape, sexual offences, forced marriage, honour based violence, female genital mutilation, child abuse, human trafficking for sexual exploitation, prostitution and pornography. The data that forms the basis of the report is derived from the CPS’ Case Management System (CMS) and its associated Management Information System (MIS) which shows the number of defendants, offences and victims or witnesses. Domestic abuse, rape, forced marriage, honour-based violence, child abuse and human trafficking cases are identified by flags applied to defendants. Stalking, harassment, sexual offences, prostitution, pornography and obscenity data can only be provided using the offences data base. The data is held within separate databases within the MIS 3 . Details of the different data bases are provided in the VAWG data annex of this report. 2 In 2003, the UN published reference: http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Women/15YearReviewofVAWMandate.pdf 3 The figures are provisional and subject to change as more information is recorded by the CPS. The CPS collects data to assist in the effective management of its prosecution functions. The CPS does not collect data which constitutes official statistics as defined in the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007. As with any large scale recording system, data is subject to possible errors in data entry and processing. We are committed to improving the quality of our data and from mid-June 2015 introduced a new data assurance regime which may explain some unexpected variance in some sets of data. The purpose of this report is to provide an assessment of performance based on the best available data from CPS case management systems. The official statistics relating to crime and policing are maintained by the Home Office and the official statistics relating to 3
Page 2 and 3: Violence against Women and Girls Cr
Page 6 and 7: Data cannot be correlated between t
Page 8 and 9: Stalking and harassment 9 Prosecu
Page 10 and 11: Sexual offences (excluding rape) 13
Page 12 and 13: Child abuse The volume of child a
Page 14 and 15: The CPS, police and judiciary joint
Page 16 and 17: Forced marriage, honour based viole
Page 18 and 19: Stalking, harassment, sexual offenc
Page 20 and 21: Violence against Women and Girls VA
Page 22 and 23: analysis are provided for Areas, fo
Page 24 and 25: Grooming and social media A Police
Page 26 and 27: Graph 2: VAWG caseload as % of tota
Page 28 and 29: Area performance The tables on page
Page 30 and 31: Domestic Abuse On 30 December 2015,
Page 32 and 33: Graph 7: DA prosecution and convict
Page 34 and 35: The underlying data is provided in
Page 36 and 37: Controlling and coercive behaviour
Page 38 and 39: Transforming Summary Justice Transf
Page 40 and 41: Domestic homicide: A man was foun
Page 42 and 43: Table 2a: Harassment and stalking o
Page 44 and 45: Stalking and harassment The CPS per
Page 46 and 47: Stalking - post relationship-breakd
Page 48 and 49: Rape In 2015-16 there was a rise in
Page 50 and 51: In 2015-16 88 the number of prosecu
Page 52 and 53: acquittals account for the majority
Page 54 and 55:
Local good practice CPS North
Page 56 and 57:
Consent Police, prosecutors, in-hou
Page 58 and 59:
The guidance is designed to improve
Page 60 and 61:
Unduly lenient sentence A 'stranger
Page 62 and 63:
Heads of RASSO Units cascaded the t
Page 64 and 65:
Table 5: Completed sexual offence p
Page 66 and 67:
Age From those defendants where age
Page 68 and 69:
Forced marriage, honour based viole
Page 70 and 71:
Honour based violence The data belo
Page 72 and 73:
Female Genital Mutilation The CPS p
Page 74 and 75:
Child abuse All cases of child abus
Page 76 and 77:
Victim data 127 , from the Witness
Page 78 and 79:
National Child Sexual Abuse Review
Page 80 and 81:
Local partnership working In C
Page 82 and 83:
Table 9: Completed human traffickin
Page 84 and 85:
Sexual trafficking The defendant wa
Page 86 and 87:
Forced labour A factory owner who e
Page 88 and 89:
TOTAL 114 197 140 97 55 99 111 C Ke
Page 90 and 91:
Pornography and obscenity In 2015-1
Page 92 and 93:
Communications Act 2003 (127 (2)(a)
Page 94 and 95:
As outlined in the child abuse sect
Page 96 and 97:
VAWG prosecutions by police force a
Page 98 and 99:
DA prosecutions by police force are
Page 100 and 101:
Rape prosecutions by police force a
Page 102 and 103:
Sexual offence prosecutions by poli
Page 104 and 105:
without violence, compared with 6,6
Page 106 and 107:
England and Wales, with a convictio
Page 108 and 109:
this is not an exhaustive list and
Page 110 and 111:
Homicide: Offences against the pers
Page 112 and 113:
Reasons for unsuccessful outcomes A
Page 114:
Glossary of acronyms BME Black and
show all

Violence against Women and Girls Crime report contents

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?