Complaints of rape and the criminal justice system: Fresh evidence on the attrition problem in England and Wales
| Author | Elisabeth A. Stanko,Katrin Hohl |
| Published date | 01 May 2015 |
| Date | 01 May 2015 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1477370815571949 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
European Journal of Criminology
2015, Vol. 12(3) 324 –341
© The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/1477370815571949
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Complaints of rape and the
criminal justice system: Fresh
evidence on the attrition
problem in England and Wales
Katrin Hohl
Department of Sociology, City University London, UK
Elisabeth A. Stanko
Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime, UK
Abstract
The UK has one of the lowest conviction rates for rape in Europe. This article presents unique
evidence on the factors that influence the attrition of rape allegations in the English criminal justice
system. The study is based on a large, representative sample of rape allegations reported to the
London Metropolitan Police, the UK’s biggest police force. The dataset contains unprecedented
detail on the incident, the victim, the suspect and the police investigation. The results lend
support to the influence of some rape myths and stereotypes on attrition. These findings suggest
that further central factors include the ethnicity of the suspect as well as what police officers and
prosecutors perceive as evidence against the truthfulness of the allegation: police records noting
a previous false allegation by the victim, inconsistencies in the victim’s account of the alleged rape,
and evidence or police opinion casting doubt on the allegation.
Keywords
Attrition, criminal justice, policing, rape
Introduction
Most rapes are never reported to the police and, of those reported, only a minority result
in a conviction. This persistent finding of empirical studies of criminal justice responses
to rape complaints has been termed the ‘attrition problem’ or ‘justice gap’ (Brown, 2011).
Corresponding author:
Katrin Hohl, City University London, Department of Sociology, Northampton Square, London EC1V 0HB,
UK.
Email: katrin.hohl.1@city.ac.uk
571949EUC0010.1177/1477370815571949European Journal of CriminologyHohl and Stanko
research-article2015
Article
Hohl and Stanko 325
Rape is an iconic offence in the measure of women’s equality in society. How complaints
of rape are treated within the criminal justice system thus not only is important for the
victims who seek justice but sends a powerful signal to society at large. With a convic-
tion rate as low as 7 percent (Home Office and Ministry of Justice data, 2013) – one of
the lowest in Europe (Lovett and Kelly 2009) – one might argue that in England and
Wales rape is effectively ‘decriminalized’ (Gregory and Lees, 1999: 91). Research has
sought to establish not only the extent of the attrition but also the factors that explain it
(Brown et al., 2007; Daly and Bouhours, 2010; Grace et al., 1992; Gregory and Lees,
1999; Harris and Grace, 1999; Hester, 2013; HMIC and HMCPSI, 2002, 2007; Jordan,
2004; Kelly, 2002; Kelly et al., 2005; Lea et al., 2003; Lovett et al., 2007; Stern, 2010).
What distinguishes complaints that go to court from those that do not? What makes a
rape complaint credible in the eyes of criminal justice agents, and what discredits a com-
plainant? Whereas the body of literature on the impact of particular aspects of the rape
complaint on attrition is growing steadily and remains a topic for global dialogue about
women’s gendered justice, the number of large-scale empirical attrition studies for
England and Wales is more limited. Key publications here date back to the 1990s (Grace
et al., 1992; Harris and Grace, 1999) and were followed by a number of government-
body commissioned reports in the early 2000s (HMIC and HMCPSI, 2002, 2007; Kelly,
2002; Kelly et al., 2005). The most recent and frequently cited (the Stern Report), a
government-commissioned report to stipulate new avenues for practice published in
2010, is a review and does not contain fresh empirical evidence (Stern, 2010). The Rape
Monitoring Group of the police oversight body – Her Majesty’s Inspectorate for the
Constabulary (HMIC) – has so far published only basic police recording statistics, and
no in-depth analyses of patterns in attrition (HMIC, 2014).
This article provides unique empirical evidence from a large, representative sample of
rape complaints made to the UK’s largest police force, the Metropolitan Police Service
in London (MPS). The dataset contains unprecedented detail on the incident, the victim,
the suspect and the police investigation, allowing us to provide an up-to-date picture of
the factors that influence attrition. To anticipate the main findings, our results lend partial
support to the influence of classic rape myths and stereotypes on attrition. We find that a
further central factor in attrition is what police and prosecutors perceive as evidence
against the victim’s allegation: the police record noting a previous false allegation by the
victim, inconsistencies in the victim’s recollection of the rape, and evidence or police
opinion casting doubt on the allegation. In the sample, none of the allegations with any
of these features was prosecuted. Furthermore, we found that a white suspect with no
prior police record is likely to avoid a full police investigation, whereas the police and
Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) appear more inclined to believe and pursue an allega-
tion that involves a non-white suspect or a suspect with a prior police record.
The existence and importance of male rape notwithstanding, this article focuses on
complaints of rape involving female victims only because there are too few male rape
complaints in the sample to draw robust conclusions about male victims. The remain-
der of the article has four parts. We first explain the attrition problem in England and
Wales and review the key findings of previous studies, before describing the empirical
study and the results. We conclude with a discussion of the findings and their
implications.
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