News reaches Emmersons, and it is worrying, that there has been a delay in setting out how the ConDems wish to deal with the prison crisis.
There had been an expectation, raised by the Government, that prison policy and sentencing would be a high priority and that a Green Paper would be published in October-and then in November. Now we understand it is delayed.
In the meantime the ConDems have issued a Report into anonymity for those accused of rape.
Unfortunately rape is one of those offences with a low conviction rate. Those who wish to protect the victims of rape-although as with domestic abuse the focus tends to be on women as victims and men as the criminals-have yet to come up with any suggestions as to how this can be improved-except to say that the system needs to be changed to make convictions more likely.
How is this aim achieved? Rape tends to be an offence involving two people. The person who alleges rape and the person accused of it. My experience is that the complainant is believed. That special measures are put in place so she may give her evidence via videolink or on tape.
My experience is that the accused is disbelieved.
The problem is thatunless there are injuries to teh complainant consistent with having been beaten or forced to have sex a jury find it hard to convict the accused. It is the nature of the offence and what it entails that is the problem rather than the system that tries to establish the defendant's guilt.
When sentenced-which takes me back to the start of this article-the Judge will be looking at reasons to impose a Life sentence or sentence that is Indeterminate.
Recently, whilst talking to a barrister about a client's case concerning rape of family members, she told me of a case which she had prosecuted whereby a 6 and 8 year old girl has lied about sexual assualts upon them by a step parent simply because they were not allowed to watch certain programmes on television. How did those girls know how to complain about sexual assault? How was such a case allowed to go all the way to trial-only then for both girls to admit that they had made it up? What about the accused and how the experience of those events will have impacted on her/him?
One assumes they knew what to say from the television programmes they had been allowed towatch. One can say that the CPS/Police will pursue allegations of sexual assault and domestic violence with vigour. One can also say that often there is not the objective analysis of evidence nor the willingness to review a case to consider if it ought to proceed to trial.
The problem is that the complainant is entitled to anonymity-the accused is not. Is that fair?
There had been an expectation, raised by the Government, that prison policy and sentencing would be a high priority and that a Green Paper would be published in October-and then in November. Now we understand it is delayed.
In the meantime the ConDems have issued a Report into anonymity for those accused of rape.
Unfortunately rape is one of those offences with a low conviction rate. Those who wish to protect the victims of rape-although as with domestic abuse the focus tends to be on women as victims and men as the criminals-have yet to come up with any suggestions as to how this can be improved-except to say that the system needs to be changed to make convictions more likely.
How is this aim achieved? Rape tends to be an offence involving two people. The person who alleges rape and the person accused of it. My experience is that the complainant is believed. That special measures are put in place so she may give her evidence via videolink or on tape.
My experience is that the accused is disbelieved.
The problem is thatunless there are injuries to teh complainant consistent with having been beaten or forced to have sex a jury find it hard to convict the accused. It is the nature of the offence and what it entails that is the problem rather than the system that tries to establish the defendant's guilt.
When sentenced-which takes me back to the start of this article-the Judge will be looking at reasons to impose a Life sentence or sentence that is Indeterminate.
Recently, whilst talking to a barrister about a client's case concerning rape of family members, she told me of a case which she had prosecuted whereby a 6 and 8 year old girl has lied about sexual assualts upon them by a step parent simply because they were not allowed to watch certain programmes on television. How did those girls know how to complain about sexual assault? How was such a case allowed to go all the way to trial-only then for both girls to admit that they had made it up? What about the accused and how the experience of those events will have impacted on her/him?
One assumes they knew what to say from the television programmes they had been allowed towatch. One can say that the CPS/Police will pursue allegations of sexual assault and domestic violence with vigour. One can also say that often there is not the objective analysis of evidence nor the willingness to review a case to consider if it ought to proceed to trial.
The problem is that the complainant is entitled to anonymity-the accused is not. Is that fair?
No comments:
Post a Comment