Exclusive:Rape charge rate: Home Office will publish ‘transparent’ rape charge data after NationalWorld investigation

The Home Office will start publishing figures revealing how many suspected rapists are charged with non-rape crimes, the Attorney General has confirmed following a NationalWorld investigation. 

In April we revealed how more than 1,600 suspected rapists had been charged with alternative offences in England and Wales between April 2017 and September 2022 – but had been counted towards the rape charge rate anyway. These accounted for about one in 10 of all suspected rapists purportedly ‘charged’ in that period. 

Police forces have had to submit data about how many crimes end with a suspect being charged with a different offence since 2017. But the figures had gone unpublished until NationalWorld obtained data from the Home Office on rape and sexual assault outcomes via a Freedom of Information request. The outcomes are grouped under a master ‘charged’ category in official crime statistics, so are included when calculating what proportion of suspected offenders faced charges. 

The recording practice affects all types of crime, but with the proportion of rapists charged by police plummeting in recent years, NationalWorld’s investigation prompted alarm that the situation facing victims of sexual violence could be even worse than feared. 

In one year, as many as one in six suspected rapists ‘charged’ by police were actually charged with non-rape crimes. And in some parts of the country, more than 20% of charges are for other offences.

In a letter to Labour Shadow Attorney General Emily Thornberry, who raised our story in Parliament last month and pushed for a government investigation, Attorney General Victoria Prentis announced the Home Office would now begin to publish the data. It had previously resisted calls for greater transparency when pressed by NationalWorld. 

“In 2016 the Government took steps to increase the transparency of data in relation to rape charges,” Prentis wrote. ”Prior to this, the reported rape charge data would have included alternative offences but these offences were indistinguishable from actual charges of rape. 

“These are now able to be seen through the recording of the alternative charges. It has taken some time for this practice to become embedded within police forces but I am glad to be able to share that [the] Home Office will begin publishing the volumes of charges made for an alternative offence. This will ensure greater transparency and accountability for police forces.”

There had been “no attempt to mislead” the public by withholding the data for the last six years, she added. Prentis insisted that there was a “limited and specific” list of other offences that could justify an alternative charge outcome for rape crimes, including sexual assault by penetration or sexual activity with a child, and that the alternative charges will be “in themselves very serious”. Thornberry was therefore wrong to suggest “serious offending is being minimised”, she said. 

In a reply Thornberry wrote: “I am sure you will accept that there are particular concerns around this issue at the present time, given public alarm over the collapse in the charge rate for rape over the past five years, and the fact that the targets of the 2021 ‘Rape Review’ are explicitly tied to the number of prosecutions and convictions for rape.”

Thornberry also questioned whether existing data will be revised back to 2016, when the ‘alternative charge’ outcome was introduced before becoming mandatory reporting for police forces in 2017, to reveal how many suspects ‘charged’ for different offences in the years since have been charged with other crimes. 

The Labour MP has also raised concerns about whether other types of offences with high public interest could have been similarly distorted by the inclusion of alternative charges, including knife crime or burglary, but these concerns have gone unaddressed, she said. 

A Home Office spokesperson confirmed the figures would be published for the first time in October, for crime statistics covering the year to June 2023.

They added: “There is still a long way to go in tackling rape and delivering justice for victims. That’s why the government is working on an ambitious programme, Operation Soteria, to transform rape investigations and prosecutions and make sure criminals responsible are put behind bars.

“Between July and September 2022, the number of adult rape cases reaching court was up 53% compared with the same period in 2019 and according to the latest Rape Review Progress Update, the government is on track to meet its target of more than doubling the number of adult rape cases reaching court by the end of this parliament.”