Policing Sexual Assault

Policing Sexual Assault provides a detailed account of current police practice in the UK in response to sexual assault. The authors use case studies and interviews to find out why when the number of rape cases has almost trebled since 1985, the proportion of cases resulting in a conviction has dropped from 24% to 8.6%. Chapters cover:

• an overview of existing research
• police culture
• police recording practices
• the role of the Crime Prosecution Service
• male rape
• analysis of the judicial process
• interviews with complainants and first-hand accounts of their experiences
• proposals for reform.

The authors place their findings within the context of theoretical debates about domestic and sexual violence and examine the gap between official condemnations of male violence, as enshrined in law, and the realities of the victims' (male and female) experiences - whereby the violence is too often condoned.