Donna Jones, Police and Crime Commissioner for Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, has told a panel of MPs the Crown Prosecution Service should be less risk-averse when considering charging suspects of Rape And Serious Sexual Offences (RASSO).
Appearing before the Home Affairs Select Committee on 20th October, Mrs Jones said:
“There needs to be a different approach. The police are judged on their rape prosecutions, while the CPS are judged on their rape convictions. And there you have the problem. Crown Prosecution Services across the country don’t necessarily want to take cases unless they are quite belt and braces.
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“Having spoken to a number of other Commissioners from all parties and all parts of the country this is a consistent problem.
“I feel, if you had a Crown Prosecutor in every custody suite in the country – not just for RASSO – you will see a significant improvement in the quality of charges and outcomes through court.”
Mrs Jones was giving evidence alongside representatives of the National Police Chiefs Council and the College of Policing. She described a ‘perfect storm’ over the last few years which had contributed to a drop in rape convictions – an increase in police workload from recording historical rape and sexual offences; additional work for investigating teams to comply with new rules on evidential disclosure when preparing cases; and a significant shortage of specialist rape investigators nationwide.
More needs to be done, she said, to encourage victims to want to proceed with police action and to support them throughout the criminal justice process.
Mrs Jones, the elected PCC for Hampshire, said:
“From the police’s perspective, I think it’s about making sure the case file quality is really strong when they go to the Crown Prosecution Service.
“Secondly, I think early charging advice is absolutely essential to keeping a witness with you on the journey. The prosecution are involved as early as they possibly can be to give the victim confidence that someone’s taking them seriously.
“[It’s] getting phones back to victims as quickly as possible. And for me also I think it would be saying to victims ‘you don’t have to be in the courtroom and face the offender if you don’t want to’.”
On that point, Mrs Jones explained she strongly supported more victims appearing virtually from remote evidence centres. This would assist victims in giving better accounts of what had happened. But the ex-magistrate said:
“As somebody who worked with HMCTS for 16 years… the technology is currently just not good enough. There needs to be some investment in HMCTS.”
Donna Jones is also been quoted as saying shoplifters should be rehabilitated at the expense of the shop owner’s they have just shoplifted from……
How about a bit of this support for the victims who are falsely accused yet get no anonymity from ‘accusation’ to ‘no case to answer’???
Exactly – the police and courts must also ensure that those accused are afforded appropriate safeguards and anonymity until their guilt has been proven, otherwise their lives will be blighted for something that they never, ever did, if it subsequently transpires that the accuser is lying.
Anyone who lies about a sexual assault or rape should be sentenced to the same amount of prison time, that someone who is guilty of the offences gets.
In this country, it is innocent until proven guilty.
Whilst the police should take someone at their word at the initial report stage, this cannot be maintained without substance to the accusation.
bring back proper coppers not rainbow cars..
All this softly softly approach in this woke society … pay the price soon.
Can’t take seriously a woman that size. And anyway, it’s getting to the point that if a woman says something then it must be true and they can never be faulted for anything. Most women have had some sort of problem with unwanted attentions, especially when young, but today there are too many snowflakes around who will cry and scream about everything. Some of these are just an embarrassment and no wonder other women don’t get taken seriously when there’s so many of the hysterical types around.
Can’t beleive that so many are unsuporting of women on here. Men are sly, devious, far more so than women. Whilst some women will lie, and are hysterical types, many of the recent arrivals of men are always looking for victims in pubs, clubs, festivals, and at night as woman leave venues.
They are the cause of the largest proportion of such attacks and spiking incidents, but, due to the PC environment, such people cannot be highlighted, so we can only bring attacks into the open when the attacker is like the white Policeman. Such is the state we are now in.
Men are sly, devious, far more so than women
ha ha ha – seriously, what sort of women have you met – women are just as sly and devious, if not more so, than men in many different ways.
although the rest of your comment is spot on
I’m all for it if the accused has their identity protected until conviction. But for that to work we need a properly funded police and court system. Takes so long for the case to come to court that the accused, if they are a danger, gets to commit more crimes. Whilst the victim has to wait for justice.
Maybe if the government spent our tax money on us instead of their mates we would have this.