News
News
November
- new research on conviction rates – 16 days campaign
New research reveals Scotland has one of
the worst rape conviction rates in Europe
A new briefing paper – ‘Rape: Still a forgotten
issue’ – has been produced by Liz Kelly and Linda Reagan of the
Child & Women Abuse Studies Unit at London Metropolitan University
. This paper, commissioned by Rape Crisis Network Europe, draws
together information on conviction rates for rape across Europe
. The conviction rate for rape in Scotland is an appalling 6%.
The only country in Europe for which there are figures available
which has a worse conviction rate is Ireland , where only 1% of
rapes recorded by the police lead to a conviction.
The research found that while the level of reporting
of rape in Scotland has increased around 300% since 1977, there
was only 1 one more conviction in 2001 than in 1977. These figures
are detailed below.
SCOTLAND |
1977 |
2001 |
Reported |
178 |
589 |
Prosecutions |
60 |
61 |
Convictions |
35 |
36 |
The figures demonstrate that the major contributory
factor in Scotland ’s very low rape conviction rate is the level
of attrition in these cases, i.e. the number of rape cases which
never make it as far as court.
There has been some positive coverage in the Herald
www.theherald.co.uk around the research, including calls from Rape Crisis Scotland
for more research into attrition in sexual offence cases in Scotland
, to research at which point cases are being dropped and the reasons
why. Rape Crisis Scotland hopes to build on this coverage by continuing
to campaign for changes to how the Scottish criminal justice system
responds to women and girls who have experienced sexual violence.
The research can be downloaded from www.rcne.com
16
Days of Activism for the Elimination of Gender Violence Nov 25
– Dec 10
November 25th has been designated by the United
Nations as the Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.
The 16 days that follow, ending with International Human Rights
Day on 10th December, are marked as the '16
Days of Activism for the Elimination of Gender Violence'
and these dates, November 25, International Day for the Elimination
of Violence Against Women and December 10, International Human
Rights Day, were chosen in order to symbolically link violence
against women and human rights and to emphasize that such violence
is a violation of women's' human rights.
This year, Glasgow City Council Cultural and Leisure
Services and the Community Safety Partnership, alongside the Glasgow
Violence Against Women Partnership, are co-ordinating a series
of events citywide to mark these 16 days of activism with a theme
of 'The Arts and Violence Against
Women'. The arts can be a very powerful medium to use
to raise awareness to the global pandemic of violence against
women and there will be city centre events between 25th November
and 10th December, plus a series of community based events which
will be co-ordinated by locally based Community Safety Partnership
development workers. Violence against women affects all our lives,
not only the women against whom it is perpetrated, but also the
development and health of their children, the social and economic
prosperity of communities and the economic infrastructure of the
city. It is vital that there is a programme of awareness raising
on the devastating effects violence and abuse can have on the
lives of women and children in our communities, and it is equally
important that those communities challenge this violence.
www.cwgl.rutgers.edu/16days/home.html
for global events
(The above information is from the Glasgow Violence
Against Women Partnership website on www.gvawp.org.uk
For details of the programme of events in Glasgow click
here
(cover of leaflet) and here
(programme) (both pdf documents)
