Source · Select Committees · Home Affairs Committee
Recommendation 15
15
Deferred
Paragraph: 102
Encourage police forces to establish specialist rape teams and provide necessary support.
Recommendation
The Government must strongly encourage police forces without specialist police rape teams to put such teams in place. Since the policing of violence against women and girls is to be added to the Strategic Policing Requirement, putting specialist police rape teams in place would be a powerful way to demonstrate the priority that should be given to tackling violence against women and girls. The Government should, for example, make clear in the next Rape Review Progress Update that it is the Government’s view that forces should have specialist rape teams set up where possible. The Government should work with the College of Policing and National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) to understand better the obstacles forces face in putting these teams in place and to provide support to forces committed to forming specialist teams.
Government response summary AI-generated
The government responded by detailing the Victims’ Right to Review scheme, explaining how it provides an opportunity for victims to have their cases reviewed, and outlined its commitment to publishing VRR data and using internal VRR analysis for learning and staff training, but did not address the recommendation for establishing specialist police rape teams.
Summary of the government's response below — read the verbatim text to verify.
Paragraph Reference:
102
Government Response
Deferred
HM Government · verbatim extract
Deferred
The Government agrees that specialism is crucial for the effective policing of rape and sexual offences; we acknowledged this in the Rape Review, and it has been reinforced through Operation Soteria. However, Chief Constables remain best placed to make decisions about the local deployment of resources, which will vary between local areas according to a range of factors. These factors may change over time, and operationally independent Chief Constables need to have the flexibility to adjust their operational structure accordingly. The Government’s Rape Review found that a national shortage of detectives had been contributing to a lack of specialism in the policing of sexual offences, and work is underway to address this. Firstly, we are improving the capacity of the police. Through the Police Uplift Programme, we have supported the recruitment of 13,576 police officers. All forces have met or exceeded the allocations set for them in 2020/21, with nearly 9,000 extra officers already recruited, and we are on track to meet our commitment of supporting the recruitment of 20,000 officers by March 2023. We announced as part of the three-year spending review an additional £550 million to fund the remaining officers in the third year of the programme. Secondly, we are working with partners to improve the capabilities of police officers in relation to issues that are relevant to sexual offences and other crime types. For example, as part of the Policing Education Qualification Framework, all student police officers will receive training in vulnerability and risk; working with the Crown Prosecution Service and Complex Cases Unit as well as sexual offences. Thirdly, funded by the Home Office, the police’s Vulnerability Knowledge and Practice Programme (VKPP) identifies best practice in the police’s response to crimes such as sexual offences and shares it across forces in England and Wales. It supports frontline officers to improve how they recognise and respond to vulnerable victims, builds the evidence base of ‘what works’ across areas such as investigation, training, and victim care, and benchmarks all forces against the National Vulnerability Action Plan to improve their response to vulnerability and improve criminal justice outcomes. Finally, the main programme of work aiming to embed sexual offences specialism in police forces is Operation Soteria. This work has reinforced that it is genuine ‘specialism’ that is important in the policing of sexual offences. Operation Soteria is working to set Chief Constables’ expectations about the resourcing for the national operating model. As it moves into its second year, Operation Soteria continues to test and evaluate the tools and techniques which will form the constituent parts of the new the national operating model for the investigation of rape, which will be made available to forces nationally from June 2023. This will include developing and refining role profiles for officers and piloting a new blended learning programme designed to upskill at pace those officers new to investigating sexual offences.
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