40 rapists get away with just a caution

40 rapists get away with just a caution
By Richard Ford, Home Correspondent



FORTY rapists a year are escaping jail sentences and instead are allowed to walk free with a caution, reprimand or final warning after admitting sex attacks on men and women.
Senior police officers, women’s groups and academics who have investigated the way that rape is dealt with by police and the justice system last night expressed surprise at the figure. Chief police officers said that as far as they were concerned rape was not an offence suitable for a caution.



The women’s groups and experts on rape called on the police and Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to provide details of cases in which cautions have been given rather than a full trial taking place.

Jennifer Tempkin, Professor of Law at the University of Sussex and an expert on the law on rape, said she had never known of a rape case resulting in a caution. “Some of these cases may be justified, but we just do not know anything about it,” she said. “Some explanation would be useful so we can all be sure that cautioning is being used properly. Forty cases of cautioning for rape in a year is a not insubstantial figure.”

The number of people cautioned for rape has more than doubled in a decade. Cautioning for rape has risen at a time when the rate of conviction for rape has fallen from one in thirteen reported cases in 1999 to one in twenty in 2004. More than half of rapists were current or former partners or boyfriends.


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'Caution' for rape! The Brits really are around the bend!