Might it be possible to connect politicians to reality?

We were a little surprised at this from the Home Affairs Commitee:

Home Office-held data for the year to September 2021 show that a mere 1.3% of the recorded rape offences that have been assigned an outcome resulted in a charge or summons.4 Recent figures from the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) show 1,557 rapeflagged cases proceeding to the prosecution stage in 2020/21, down from 5,190 in 2016/17.5

We thought we recalled something that happened in that year - over and above the gross dismissal of the importance of rape as a crime to be prosecuted that is. So we checked that footnote (5) and it’s the CPS saying:

Owing to the impact of COVID-19 on the criminal justice system, the volume of completed prosecutions fell to 1,557 in 2020/21 from 2,102 in 2019/20.

The volume prosecuted continues to be on an upward trend as recovery from the pandemic continues. There were 547 completed prosecutions in Q4 2020/21, 486 in Q3, 306 in Q2 and 218 in Q1. The latest quarter has the highest volume since Q1 19/20 (593).

Oh, right. Yes, we just knew that something had happened that year. Do note that the year being used here is to end-March, so the last quarter of 2019/20 was also covid afflicted.

Of course, it’s possible to point out that they do mutter something, the Home Affairs Committee, about covid down on page 16 but that’s really rather later in any such report than anyone ever bothers to read. Well, except for footnote checkers like us and we have no friends. Evidence of this being an article from Vice magazine which quotes the numbers but entirely misses the pandemic disease qualification.

We’d be willing to lay substantial bets at fair odds that much other newspaper reporting will miss this rather crucial point.

We’re entirely willing to accept that there might be something wrong with rape prosecution. As we’ve said before now there’s always a trade off between prosecution and conviction rates - increase prosecutions and inevitably more marginal cases, harder to prove, will be prosecuted leading to a fall in conviction rates from that prosecution decision. Maybe the current system is wrong at one or another point.

But we would and do insist that before anyone can have a rational decision about such things it’s necessary to start with reality.

The prosecution rate has been rising in recent years. Not, as this committee report makes it look, fallen off a cliff - other than that covid influence of course.