Target culture puts justice in jeopardy
Amid the confusion and outcry over the collapse of two rape cases, and the review of dozens of others, there is one certainty: the determination by the Crown Prosecution Service and police to take sexual offences more seriously is right. No one wants to go back to an era when women were deemed to be “bringing it on themselves” because they wore a skirt above the knee or had enjoyed a drink.
But something else now seems equally evident: the insistence, led by the CPS, that the focus should exclusively be higher conviction rates was wrong. It was bound to send a message to police that conviction, not justice, was the priority. And that in turn was bound to lead to cases where officers found themselves suppressing evidence which might help the defence. What we want is not a higher conviction rate for the sake of it, but more guilty rapists behind bars. To forget this is to allow target culture to worm its way into one of our most precious institutions – the justice system, whose enduring strength depends upon blindly weighing evidence, and presuming innocence before guilt.
Target culture is a disservice to women and to men – to those who never see their attacker jailed and to those falsely accused of being attackers. But if it is not the answer, what is?
Undoubtedly, the collapse of these cases is taking place within a wider, and positive, cultural movement – the empowerment of women. But the CPS should not be leading, or attempting to lead, cultural change for two reasons. The first is that, if it does not test the strength of prosecution cases, then defence barristers surely will. The CPS is protecting no one by pretending otherwise. The second point is that, by definition, any pioneering cultural movement will be beyond the position of mainstream society, from which juries are formed. That creates a gap which only makes securing convictions all the harder.
True cultural change starts at the bottom, with parents and schools, and changed attitudes to violent pornography and social media which normalises violent attitudes to women and sex. Above this, the police must have renewed, unambiguous instructions to focus on evidence, and given the resources to investigate and assemble that evidence properly. As things stand, in rightly seeking to improve the system for victims, we risk jeopardising the strides we have already made.