Freedom of Information Release 44 dated 21/08/20 - Rape charged offences on females from 01/01/2018 to 01/01/2020 in England and Wales
Your request, in italics, and our responses appear below: -
1. How many men have been charged with rape against a female from 1/1/2018 to 1/1/2020 in England & Wales?
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) does not hold a central record of this data. In order to establish the numbers requested, a manual review of all cases involving an offence of rape during the financial years covering the calendar years described, would be required in order to identify the gender of defendant and complainant/witness.
Section 12(1) of the FOI Act means public authorities are not obliged to comply with a request for information if it estimates the cost of complying would exceed the appropriate limit. The appropriate limit for central government it is set at £600. This represents the estimated cost of one person spending approximately 3.5 working days determining whether the department holds the information, and locating, retrieving and extracting the information.
We believe that the cost of reviewing all relevant cases, as indicated in the published data from our annual Violence against Women and Girls’ (VAWG) reports, for financial years 2017/18, 2018/19 and 2019/20 would exceed the appropriate limit. Consequently, we are not obliged to comply with part one of your request.
Under section 16 of Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) we have an obligation to advise what, if any, information may assist you. The CPS publishes data pertaining to the prosecution of rape cases by the gender of a defendant and by the gender of a complainant/witness. The defendant and complainant/witness data are held within separate databases and cannot be correlated. This data, within the VAWG Report for financial year 2018-2019 can be accessed via the following link:
www.cps.gov.uk/publication/violence-against-women-and-girls-data
Annual Data for financial year 2019/20 has recently been published, this accompanies the quarterly data release where the VAWG annual data tables year ending March 2020 are accessible via the following link:
www.cps.gov.uk/publication/cps-data-summary-quarter-4-2019-2020
The data that forms the basis of the annual tables is derived from the CPS Case Management System (CMS), CPS Witness Management System (WMS) and its associated Management Information System (MIS).
2. In those cases where it was determined that a victim lied or made a false allegation, how many of the female accusers were issued with a fixed penalty, how many were charged with “wasting police time” and how many were indicted for “perverting the course of justice”?
3. Of those indicted with “perverting the course of justice”, how many were convicted and how many of those convicted served a custodial sentence.
The CPS does not hold any records relating to Fixed Penalty Notices (FPNs) as these are issued by Police. We are therefore unable to provide data pertaining to the number of females who received FPNs in the circumstances described in part two. The Police may be able to provide this information.
In order to establish the number of females who were charged with wasting police time and perverting the course of justice, for the reasons outlined in part two, and the number convicted of perverting the course of justice as requested in part three, a manual examination of all cases involving these offences would be required.
As an indication of the work this would involve, our records indicate that in the two-year period ending December 2019 there was an equivalent of 1755 cases involving offences of attempting/conspiring/perverting the course of justice and an equivalent of 457 cases involving offences of wasting police time, in which a prosecution commenced.
Section 12(1) of the FOI Act means public authorities are not obliged to comply with a request for information if it estimates the cost of complying would exceed the appropriate limit. The appropriate limit for central government it is set at £600. This represents the estimated cost of one person spending approximately 3.5 working days determining whether the department holds the information, and locating, retrieving and extracting the information.
We believe that the cost of reviewing approximately 2212 cases would exceed the appropriate limit. Consequently, we are not obliged to comply with parts two and three of your request.
Information Management Unit