Sussex Police & Crime Commissioner doesn’t think things are moving fast enough when it comes to conviction rates for rape and sexual assault

Katy Bourne spoke during a Police and Crime Panel meeting on Friday (June 28).

Referring to Operation Soteria – a research and change programme aimed at helping forces to transform their response to rape and serious sexual offences – Mrs Bourne said: “All forces now have adopted this.

“But if I’m really honest, it hasn’t moved the conviction rate dial as fast as I would have liked.”

Acknowledging that the conviction rates nationwide had certainly increased, she made it clear that it wasn’t ‘anywhere near’ where she would like it to be.

She added: “If you’re a victim of this type of crime, it doesn’t get much worse than that. Having to relive your experience again in court – I can’t imagine the trauma that must inflict.”

In January, the PCC’s office worked with the Chief Constable to set up a unit called Fides – named after the Roman goddess of trust.

The operation took on eight retired detectives and people with investigative experience to work with victims of rape and sexual assault, whose cases would either take a long time to investigate or who, for whatever reason, didn’t want to go forward with an investigation.

Mrs Bourne said the unit was already starting to show results.

Conviction rates for rape have been historically low across all forces.

Data from the Home Office shows that, in 2022/23, 1,771 rape offences were recorded by Sussex Police.

At the start of that financial year, the ‘solved’ rate for rape stood at 3.7%. The ‘solved’ rate for rape and other sexual offences was 6.3 per cent.

In January of this year, figures showed that there had been an improvement – though the solve rate still floundered below 10%.

During 2023, 88 rape cases were solved, compared to 50 in 2022. This meant the solved rate had increased from 3.3% to 4.7% across the calendar year.

For serious sexual offences, the solve rate rose from 187 to 219 – remaining at 8%.

For rape and serious sexual offences combined, the solve rate rose from 237 in 2022 to 307 in 2023 – increasing from 6.2% to 6.6%.