News

Our initial response to proposed criminal justice reforms

Today the Scottish Government published the Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill. This is a potentially transformative bill which could significantly improve the experience of survivors of sexual violence.

Survivors across Scotland have campaigned tirelessly to highlight the injustices of the current legal process and have played a crucial role in making the case for change.

The bill will:

• End the not proven verdict;
• Introduce a specialist sexual offence court;
• Give ministers the power to begin a pilot of single judge led trials in Scotland;
• Introduce independent legal representation (ILR) for survivors in cases where the defence seeks to bring evidence on their sexual behaviour into court;
• Introduce a legal right to anonymity in sexual offence cases.

We are strongly supportive of these proposals. For more information on our positions, please see our policy briefings on criminal justice reform, alongside specific briefings on the proposed specialist sexual offence court, judge led trials and independent legal representation.

Many of these steps were recommended in Lady Dorrian’s review of the management of sexual offences and we pay tribute to her leadership and the work of this group.

In Scotland, conviction rates for rape are the lowest of any crime type. For cases that reach trial the conviction rate is around 51% compared to 91% for all other crimes. Most cases never make it as far as court: in 2021/22 there were 2,298 rape and attempted rapes reported to the police, but only 152 prosecutions and 78 convictions.

There is significant evidence that myths about sexual violence influence juries in their decision making.

There is a huge amount of research and evidence to suggest that these steps will not only make engaging with the justice system easier for survivors but lead to more justice being done.

We asked survivors what they thought justice reform in Scotland needs to look like and why it matters. Here are some of their comments:

“Victims should not feel scared to come forward and report a crime due to the pressures of a court case. Where is the justice in that?”

“it was a horrendous ordeal and completely traumatising - from the court dates being suspended and rescheduled, the actual trial itself… and the way I was perceived by all professionals involved, other than the lovely victim support girls on the day of trial and of course rape crisis, as doing something wrong in speaking out…. So, I would love nothing more than to see some change!“

“For me, the thought of standing in front of the family, the public, the people who have abused and assaulted me or lawyers and judges, is absolutely terrifying and something I could never even consider. The culture of victim blaming in society is so damaging that people who have these experiences are likely to think they’ll be blamed even when the evidence is strong. Or the mental chaos that going through the lengthy court process is, only for the perpetrator to end up with a short sentence is not worth it.”

Making the decision to report rape or sexual violence can be very difficult. It is not made easier by the barriers in place to accessing justice for survivors. We hope this bill will begin to remove some of these barriers and help more survivors in Scotland to get justice.

This is not a perfect bill. We have concerns about its proposed changes to jury majority from 8 out 15, to 8 out of 12. We know that juries are reluctant to convict in rape cases, and any change in jury majority could have a significant impact on convictions. We are concerned that unless significant and sustained efforts are made to address the impact of rape myths on jury decision making the overall impact of this bill might actually be to reduce the number of rape convictions.

Notwithstanding our concerns about the change in jury majority, the fact that these proposals have been made by the Scottish Government is testament to the incredible work of survivors from across Scotland who have campaigned for change. This is a bold, necessary and important bill.