The government is apparently considering introducing targets for the prosecution of rape.
Downing Street plans rape prosecution targets for police and CPS
Rape prosecutions targets are a disastrous idea by barrister Matthew Scott
Rape should never go unpunished. But I fear setting targets for trials would betray victims - and the innocent by barrister Jerry Hayes (prosecution barrister in the Liam Allan case)
... At the centre of these latest pronouncements over rape is Victims’ Commissioner, Dame Vera Baird, a former Labour MP, who served as solicitor general in Gordon Brown’s administration.
She now sits on the Prime Minister’s Crime and Justice Task Force and has been pushing her wrongheaded ‘solutions’ on this issue for some time. ...
Yes, we must strain every sinew to make the perpetrators of rape, sexual assault and abuse pay for their crimes, but not at the expense of undermining the very foundations of our justice system.
I fear a quota system of any kind would do just that. And this at a time when convictions in rape cases that actually get to court are at an all-time high of 68.5 per cent.
Thankfully, the Government has already moved to quash the idea at birth, with the PM’s spokesman saying: ‘Quotas or numerical targets would undermine prosecutorial impartiality where cases are individual by nature and require a specific set of considerations in each instance.’
I sincerely hope they stick to their guns, in the face of continued lobbying. For I fear we haven’t heard the last of Dame Vera and her like, and a dangerously warped view of justice.
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