Defining and Registering Criminal Offences and Measures - Oapen

Rape and Other Sexual Offences 79
4.4 Data availability
Data availability was reviewed for each of the three sexual offences (rape, sexual
assault, and sexual abuse of minors). For the 33 questionnaires returned at the
time the AGIS report was written, all national correspondents were able to indicate
the number of rape offences recorded by the police in 2006, whereas 13
countries could not provide such data for sexual assault. Then, seven countries
could not provide the number of police-recorded offences for sexual abuse of
minors.
Overall, for three countries there are no data for the number of convictions
for rape. Then, ten national correspondents could not provide conviction data for
sexual assault, and seven countries could not provide conviction data for sexual
abuse of minors.
Whereas most countries could provide prison population data for rape, only
nine national correspondents could provide such data for sexual assault, and only
eight national correspondents gave data for sexual abuse of minors.
5. Additional questionnaire and evaluation
The additional questionnaire was sent to members of the ESB group; answers
from ten countries could be analyzed, namely Albania, England and Wales, Finland,
France, Germany, Iceland, Poland, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Ukraine.
With respect to sexual offences, the additional questionnaire contained questions
referring to the legal concepts of rape, sexual assault, and sexual abuse of
minors.
As can be seen in Tables D.10 to D.12, many items do not exist per se in the
criminal legislation of the countries. Interestingly, there are also many differences
across countries. The fact that some items are not separately identifiable in criminal
law might explain why standard ESB definitions cannot be matched in some
cases.