A gap or a chasm? - National Police Library Online Catalogue

A gap or a chasm? Attrition in reported rape cases
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Table 3.2 presents disaggregated data for prosecutions and convictions involving adults and
children (under 16-years-olds) for the years 1998-2002, covering all rape and attempted
rape cases. Conviction data include guilty pleas; convictions at trial are lower than this
overall rate. For adults, around one-quarter of prosecuted cases result in a conviction; the
figure was more than one-third for child cases, until a dramatic fall of 12 percentage points
f rom 2000 to 2001, although it re c o v e red very slightly in 2002. Cases considered the
‘weakest’ evidentially are not referred up to the CPS by the police. These data suggest that
even cases deemed relatively strong by police and supported by CPS fare poorly in the later
stages of the criminal justice process.
Table 3.2: Comparison of prosecution outcomes in adult and child rape cases 1998-2002
Rapes and attempted rapes Rapes and attempted rapes of
adult females and males of child (under-16) females and males
Year Prosecutions Convictions Prosecutions Prosecutions Convictions Prosecutions
resulting in resulting in
convictions convictions
1998 1366 382 28% 810 291 36%
1999 1319 317 24% 846 335 40%
2000 1245 329 26% 788 264 34%
2001 1528 326 21% 1112 241 22%
2002 1646 352 21% 1288 292 23%
Source: Home Office data
The 2001 and 2002 Home Office data are revealing in other ways (see Appendix 1). Here
re p o rting, prosecution and conviction data are presented by police force area; for the
purposes of this report, additional calculations of the conviction rate and rates of reporting
by population were undertaken. The conviction rate shows a considerable range between
a reas, varying from one to 14 per cent across the two years. A number of potential
confounding factors were explored, including whether there were higher reporting rates per
head of population, but were not linked to the variations in conviction rates in any obvious
way. 21 Nor were higher or lower rates simply a function of either metropolitan versus rural
areas or the number of cases dealt with per year: areas with conviction rates above ten per
cent in 2002 (Cleveland, Cumbria, Gwent, South Wales and South Yo r k s h i re) and those
21. There were, however, interesting variations in the number of notifiable offences per 100,000: taking the 2002
data, the majority of force areas had rates of between 15 and 25 (n=25), nine areas had rates of below 15
and eight rates of more than 25. The higher rates were not associated with Metropolitan areas, apart fro m
London that had the highest overall.