The Tory Government talks about wanting to tackle violence against women and girls – while presiding over a system crippled by underfunding, which in most cases cannot bring perpetrators to justice. As with many aspects of our public realm, the Tories talk tough and deliver precious little.
Much has been written about the horrifyingly low conviction rate for rape cases in the UK – which is driven in larger part by a lack of cases in the courts, rather than by ‘not guilty’ verdicts. And the huge backlog in the Crown Courts plagues the system and undermines justice: a vast 1 in 7 cases waiting for trial are rape or serious sexual offences.
It’s bad for victims, who wait endlessly as their cases are adjourned, dropped, or never even reach the charging stage, and bad for justice.
Labour are determined to do better, and tackling this issue is a central mission set out by Keir Starmer. But in a system so fundamentally broken, the question is how?
A new approach to dealing with alleged perpetrators of sexual violence is desperately needed, because too often the evidence is too limited or patchy to reach the criminal courts – let alone achieve a conviction.
But a different course is also needed because we need a prevention-focussed strategy. The aim must be protecting women and girls, and for all the focus on crime statistics, a conviction is sadly quite rare, and often it isn’t enough. We cannot allow perpetrators to finish their sentences and return unhindered to their previous behaviour – and we cannot endlessly raise prison sentences for offenders, which is expensive and ineffective without well-resourced rehabilitative focus. And when so many aren’t even convicted in the first place, what protection do we offer women and girls?
The Courts have at their disposal a suite of powers to restrict the freedom and combat the behaviour of violent offenders (especially in domestic violence cases), like restraining orders. And, there are particular orders for sexual offenders, which can restrict perpetrators’ ability to work or live with women and girls, access certain websites, or allow police to monitor their phone and web activity.
But many of these orders are also available where there is no conviction – which may be because the victim did not support a prosecution, because the evidence is not admissible in a criminal court, or there isn’t enough to prove the case ‘beyond reasonable doubt’.
With specialist police officers, and well-resourced teams, it is possible to envisage a new approach to violence against women and girls which asks not only “are we likely to get a conviction” but also “what can we do to protect these victims, and potential future victims”.
Perhaps that sounds simple and obvious, but it could be a radical overhaul in the way that the authorities approach this issue, which focuses on protecting our community rather than aiming for the all-or-nothing of criminal convictions which may come too late or not at all.
A government serious about dealing with the problem would need not just to make this clear policy (these orders are already utilised to varying extents by different police forces) but also to adequately resource and train specialist teams to bring these cases and ensure any resulting Court orders are properly, robustly, and fairly enforced.
New governments have the chance to bring wholesale changes of direction and approach – and if tackling violence against women and girls is to be front and centre of the next Labour government’s agenda, we must think seriously not just about chasing more convictions and longer sentences but about protecting people in the first place.
For more on Labour’s plan to tackle VAWG, see ‘How can we achieve justice for rape victims? What Labour can learn from Operation Soteria’.
