Found: Figure1&2: Court Martials for sexual offences, convictions and rape case outcomes in Armed Forces in

Found: Figure1&2: Court Martials for sexual offences, convictions and rape case outcomes in Armed Forces

Found: The maximum penalty is a level 3 fine (£1000). 63 Q446 , Lynette Woodrow. 64 Sexual Offences: Convictions

Found: Figure1&2: Court Martials for sexual offences, convictions and rape case outcomes in Armed Forces in

Found: Figure1&2: Court Martials for sexual offences, convictions and rape case outcomes in Armed Forces

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many people have been convicted under section 53 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 in each year since 2010.

Answered by Laura Farris - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Ministry of Justice) (jointly with Home Office)

The Ministry of Justice holds data on the number of offenders convicted under section 53 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, covering the period requested. This is publicly available and can be obtained through the Outcomes by Offence Data tool, using HO offence code: 02418 – Controlling a prostitute for gain.

The information is published quarterly as part of the Criminal Justice System statistics.

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they will take to ensure that the courts service record the gender of a person convicted of a sexual assault as “male” if they possess male genitalia, regardless of their preferred gender identity.

Answered by Lord Bellamy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)

Courts are required by the Courts Act 2003 and Criminal Procedure Rules to ask defendants to provide name, date of birth and nationality (the latter now only after sentence and in circumstances specified by the relevant rule). If and once an individual is remanded or sentenced into prison custody, HM Prison Service records their legal gender. Where the individual’s self-identified gender differs, this is also recorded, whilst making clear on the record that this is not their legally recognised gender.

There are currently no plans to alter these procedures.

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many sexual offences were (a) reported, (b) charged and (c) resulted in a conviction in England and Wales in each month since July 2021.

Answered by Sarah Dines

Information on the number of offences recorded each quarter and the investigative outcomes of crimes including charges recorded by the police in England and Wales by offence category, for sexual offences, is routinely published by the Home Office here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/police-recorded-crime-open-data-tables.

Data on the number of convictions recorded by the police in England and Wales on a quarterly basis can be found in the Outcomes by Offence tool published as part of the Criminal Justice System Statistics publication for convictions here:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1113400/outcomes-by-offence-tool-2021-revised-2.xlsx.

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many people have been (a) arrested, (b) charged and (c) convicted under section 53A of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 in each calendar year since 2016; and what penalty was imposed in cases of conviction.

Answered by Rachel Maclean

The Home Office collects and publishes statistics on the number of arrests for notifiable offences, conducted by each police force in England and Wales, on an annual basis.

Data are held at the offence group level only (for example ‘Violence against the person’ and ‘Sexual offences’). Information specifically on the number of arrests for offences under section 53A of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 are not held centrally.

Data are published in the ‘Police Powers and Procedures, England and Wales’ statistical bulletin, the latest of which can be accessed here:

Police powers and procedures England and Wales statistics - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

The Home Office collects and publishes statistics on the number of charges for notifiable offences, for each police force in England and Wales on a quarterly basis.

This includes ‘Soliciting for the purpose of prostitution’ under section 53A of the Sexual Offences Act 2003.

Data are published in the ‘Police recorded outcomes’ tables, the latest of which can be accessed here: Police recorded crime and outcomes open data tables - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

The Ministry of Justice holds information on convictions under 53A of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 up to December 2020, available in the ‘Principal offence proceedings and outcomes by Home Office offence code’ data tool, available here:https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/987731/HO-code-tool-principal-offence-2020.xlsx

Use the ‘Offence code’ filter to isolate the following offence:

• 16702 - Paying or promising to pay a person to provide sexual services, where that person is subject to exploitative conduct to induce or encourage them to provide those services

Convictions will populate Row 33 and sentence outcomes will populate rows 34 to 42.

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what recent steps he has taken to help improve conviction rates for rape and sexual assaults.

Answered by James Cartlidge - Minister of State (Ministry of Defence)

We are determined to make the criminal justice system far more sensitive to the needs of victims, and relentless in pursuing their perpetrators.

To meet that aim, we are:

1. on track to recruit 20,000 Police Officers by the end of Parliament. We have also recruited 500 new Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) prosecutors and trained 100 Rape and Serious Sexual Offences (RASSO) specialists;
2. rolling out Operation Soteria, a new investigatory model which focuses on the suspect’s, rather than the victim’s, behaviour;
3. when the victim of rape gets to trial, we are giving them the option to pre-record their evidence (Section 28) so they are spared the ordeal of giving evidence under the glare of the courtroom;
4. increasing funding for victim support services to £185 million by 2024/25, which will increase the number of Independent Sexual and Domestic Violence Advisors we fund to over 1,000;
5. extending The Rape Support Fund until March 2023, to ensure support services have the funding stability they need to meet demand. Core funding for rape support centres through this fund has increased by 50% this financial year (21/22), from £8m to £12m per annum;
6. introducing a single source of 24/7 support for victims of rape and sexual violence;
7. introducing systematic and cultural change to ensure that victims feel supported through our Rape Review Action Plan; and
8. our plans for a new Victims’ Law will make sure all victims have confidence that they will be listened to and supported at every step of the way.

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent assessment she has made of trends in the level of crimes of sexual violence against women and girls in (a) Coventry, (b) the West Midlands and (c) England; and what assessment her Department has made of the conviction rate for such crimes in those areas in each of the last five years.

Answered by Rachel Maclean

In recent years, the number of sexual offences recorded by the police has increased as forces have improved their recording of these crimes and more victims have come forward to report due to high-profile cases and awareness campaigns.

The Government welcomes the fact that more victims of sexual offences, which are all too often hidden crimes, are coming forward and reporting these crimes to the police. However, it also recognises that there is more to be done to tackle violence against women and girls generally and, in particular, to improve the outcomes in rape and sexual offence cases.

In June 2021, we published our end-to-end review of how the criminal justice system handles rape. It set out a robust programme of work to drive improvements at every stage of the criminal justice system’s response to rape. Regularly published scorecards will show how the criminal justice system is performing under a series of key metrics, and regional scorecards will allow us to drill down to see where actions are working well and where improvement is required.

Furthermore, we have recently published a cross-Government Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy to help ensure that women and girls are safer everywhere – at home, online and in public.

Finally, for 2021/2022, the Ministry of Justice will provide £150.5 million for victim and witness support services, which includes £51 million to increase support for rape and domestic abuse victims. This year’s Spending Review will deliver access to justice by continuing to invest across the justice system and expanding the support available for users. It will: bolster support for victims of crime by increasing annual funding for Ministry of Justice victim support services to over £185 million by 2024-25, an uplift of 85% from 2019-20.

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps he is taking to improve conviction rates for rape and sexual assault offences.

Answered by Victoria Atkins - Secretary of State for Health and Social Care

In June 2021, in response to falling rates of prosecutions in rape and serious sexual offence cases and concerns around victims feeling they are not able to pursue their case, this government published the end-to-end Rape Review report and action plan.

The Action Plan sets out transformative action across the Criminal Justice System to address the reasons for the decrease in prosecutions since 2016 across four areas:

• Holding each part of the Criminal Justice System accountable for driving improvement through publication of transparent performance metrics (e.g. on timeliness and quality of cases) and improved governance through a ministerial-chaired taskforce with specific responsibility for implementation of the Rape Review action plan;
• Providing quality support to every victim of rape and sexual assault, which is appropriate to their needs, when they need it;
• Transforming the way the police and CPS investigate and prosecute cases by focusing investigations on the behaviour of the suspect rather than the behaviour of the victim; and
• Improving the victim’s experience of court, without compromising the principle of a fair trial, by reviewing the use of evidence presented in court and ensuring consistent practice in courts across the country.

Found: Again, the largest proportional increase was seen among theft offences (up 28%), followed by sexual