Parliamentary Search

Written question asked by Lord Brennan of Canton (Labour) on Monday, 4 March 2024, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Thursday, 7 March 2024 (named day). It was answered by Chris Philp (Conservative) on Thursday, 7 March 2024 on behalf of the Home Office.

Rape: Databases

Question

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether he has made a recent assessment of the effectiveness of the cross-criminal justice system rape data tool established by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and Avon and Somerset Police to collect, share and analyse end-to-end rape data as part of the Police-CPS Joint National Rape Action Plan.

Answer

We recognise the importance of linking end-to-end data across criminal justice agencies and are committed to continuing to improve the quality of and access to data to enable us to develop deeper insights and improve the response to crimes such as rape.

We publish regular statistics on adult rape through the CJS Delivery Data Dashboard. These statistics demonstrate progress on our ambition to more than double the number of adult rape cases reaching court by the end of this Parliament, and to return volumes of cases being referred to the police, charged by the CPS and going to court, to at least 2016 levels. In the year to June 2023 adult rape prosecutions were up 54% on the year to June 2022, this is the fifth consecutive year we’ve seen an increase in suspects being brought to trial.

In October 2023, the Home Office and Ministry of Justice published guidance and a template Memorandum of Understanding to support local criminal justice partners to share data for the purposes of monitoring and improving performance. The Home Office do not hold data on the cost of the development of this tool but through the Rape Review, the government provided £300,000 to the Police Digital Service to evaluate and develop guidance on a range of technical solutions which could be utilised by local agencies to link their data on rape, including the tool developed by Avon and Somerset Police.

Avon and Somerset were also the pioneering police force for Operation Soteria, which has developed new national operating models for the investigation and prosecution of rape to support police and prosecutors to ensuring cases are investigated fully and pursued rigorously through the courts.

Secondary information

Type
Written question
Reference
16623
Session
2023-24
Grouped for answer
Yes
Subjects
Databases Criminal investigation Rape Standards
Link
View this Written question on www.parliament.uk