Downing Street Says » Rape Conviction Rate

Asked if the Prime Minister thought that the conviction rate for rape was of concern, the PMS said that obviously the Government had been taking action in order to deal with victims of sexual violence offences and taken action to increase the conviction rate for rape. We now had specially trained police officers in virtually all forces, specialist rape prosecutors and had established the Sexual Assault Referral Centres in order to help victims of violent sexual offences.

Asked if those actions had had the desired affect, the PMS said that obviously there was always more that could be done. He went on to say that it was this Government that had introduced a number of specific measures in order to help both with the victims of violent sexual offences and also to help ensure that the action could be taken to get the conviction rate up.

Asked if more should be done, the PMS repeated that you would always want to do more, in this area particularly. We had put a number of measures in place to help ensure that more convictions could be forthcoming through the training of specialist prosecutors and by having specially trained police officers in virtually all forces.

Asked if there was a need to address some of the wider cultural problems, for example sexual education, the PMS said that that was something we had been looking at. This Government introduced Sexual Assault Referral Centres in order to help victims of sexual violent offences. Last year the Home Office ran a campaign to raise awareness among men about the need to get consent prior to having sex.

Asked if Government accepted or disputed the claim that the UK had the lowest conviction rate in the EU for rape, the PMS said that he did not have the comparative figures to hand but repeated that there was always more that the Government would like to do in order to increase the conviction rate and we had already taken action to try to deliver that.

Asked if the Prime Minister was concerned that sentences appeared to be decreasing, the PMS said that this was a matter best addressed to the Ministry of Justice. Obviously, this was something that the Government kept continuously under review; nobody should be left in any doubt regarding the Prime Minister’s view that people who commit serious offences like rape should be given serious jail terms.

No Comments »

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Post a public comment

Name (required)
E-mail (required)
(You must give an email address, but it will not be displayed to the public.)
Website
(You may give your website, and it will be displayed to the public.)

Comments:

This is not a way of contacting the Prime Minister. If you would like to contact the Prime Minister, go to the 10 Downing Street official site.

Privacy note: Shortly after posting, your name and comment will be displayed on the site. This means that people searching for your name on the Internet will be able to find and read your comment.

Original PMOS briefings are © Crown Copyright. Crown Copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen's Printer for Scotland. Click-use licence number C02W0004089. Material is reproduced from the original 10 Downing Street source, but may not be the most up-to-date version of the briefings, which might be revised at the original source. Users should check with the original source in case of revisions. Comments are © Copyright contributors. Everything else is © Copyright Downing Street Says.

» Monday, November 12, 2007

Rape Conviction Rate

No Comments »

Post a public comment

Search

Supported by

Recent Briefings

Archives

Links

Syndicate (RSS/XML)

Credits

Enquiries