Prosecutions for sex offences plunge to record low

PROSECUTIONS of sex offences have fallen by a third in a year to a record low amid rows over evidence disclosure, Ministry of Justice (MOJ) figures reveal.

Prosecutions plunged from 11,311 in 2017 to 7,594 last year, despite a huge increase in recorded sex offences from 50,000 in 2008 to more than 120,000 last year. It is the lowest number of prosecutions since 2008, the first year for which records are held. The prosecution rate is now a third of what it was a decade ago, down from 16.6 per cent in 2008 to 6.3 per cent last year.

Overall prosecutions for all offences have also hit a 50-year low, despite rising crime rates.

Women’s groups said the fall in sex offence prosecutions was catastrophic, with police forced into trawling victims’ phones and private lives to ensure that digital evidence would not emerge that could collapse a trial.

“Prosecutors are being urged to drop ‘weak’ cases and women are facing extraordinary levels of scrutiny of their phones and private lives when they report rape, ” said Rachel Krys, co-director of the End Violence Against Women coalition. “These numbers are a scandal. They demonstrate a collapse in justice for rape victims and near impunity for rapists.”

In a bid to prevent the late disclosure of evidence, prosecutors and police are proposing rape victims hand over their mobile phones to police or risk their case being dropped, a move described by critics as a “digital strip search”.

The MOJ blamed the decline on “resource pressures on the police” in light of the surge in sex offences and the “increased complexity of evidence gathering” due to the rise in digital evidence.

Across all crimes, the number of offenders prosecuted fell two per cent to 1.38million, its lowest level since 1970. Prosecutions for robbery have more than halved in a decade, from 13,096 in 2008 to 5,713 last year, with the prosecution rate per offence dropping from 16.3 per cent to 9.1 per cent.

Theft prosecutions have also halved from 146,304 in 2008 to 75,986 in 2018, the lowest for at least a decade. Just one in 20 thefts is prosecuted.

Fraud offences have increased seven-fold from 72,314 in 2008 to 515,261 last year, but the number of prosecutions has fallen from 16,259 to 9,016 in the same period. It amounts to a prosecution rate of just 1.7 per cent.

While violence has risen from 709,008 offences in 2008 to 1,242,803 last year, prosecutions have fallen from 45,119 to 36,890. That represents a prosecution rate of 3 per cent.

Knife prosecutions bucked the trend with a 4 per cent rise to 16,200 defendants. This was driven by a rise in prosecutions for “possession of a bladed article in a public place” as police cracked down on knife crime.