Published 15 December 2022
Last updated 24 January 2023 — See all updates
Operation Soteria Bluestone Year
One Report
Details
Operation Soteria is a unique police and CPS programme to develop
new operating models for the investigation and prosecution of
rape in England and Wales by June 2023. The policing model is
being developed by a team of experts funded by the Home Office
(£6.65m from 2021 to 23).
Between January 2021 and August 2022, a team of academics
conducted sequential deep dives on the police response to rape in
5 police forces: Avon and Somerset Police, the Metropolitan
Police Service, Durham Constabulary, West Midlands Police and
South Wales Police. A wide range of data and information was
gathered and examined during the deep dives - including reviews
of case files, observations of investigations and training, focus
groups with support services and victims.
Following the deep dives, the forces have developed tailored
improvement plans to address the findings.
An independent report, authored by the co-academic lead from the
programme, Professor Betsy Stanko, has been published setting out
the findings from these deep dives across the six key areas of
research.
The report’s findings reinforce the findings from the
Government’s End-to-End Rape Review and highlight that policing
needs a capable and confident workforce which understands the
nature of rape and sexual offences and utilises this knowledge to
thoroughly investigate suspects and better support victims.
The findings are being used to inform the development of the new
National Operating Model which will support policing to improve
their response to rape and other sexual offences.
The report’s key findings highlight that:
- investigators and other police staff lack sufficient
specialist knowledge about rape and other sexual offending, and
there is a need for specialism and research-informed specialist
investigative practice for rape and sexual offences;
- disproportionate effort has been put into testing the
credibility of a victim’s account, and there is a need to
re-balance investigations to include a thorough investigation of
the suspect’s behaviour;
- the learning and development available to investigators has
lacked specialist knowledge about offending, which has been
exacerbated by high workloads, the complexity of investigations,
and resourcing – this is affecting investigations and victim
engagement;
- there is a direct link between officer burnout, a lack of
learning and development and the confidence of officers in
whether they are using the right investigative strategies; and
- better strategic analysis of a force’s recorded rape offences
and improved analytical capability is needed to ensure offending
contexts are reflected in investigative strategies and when
monitoring performance.
Operation Soteria is one of many pieces of work underway which
supports our ambition to more than double the number of cases
reaching court and we are encouraged that the number of referrals
of adult rape cases from the police to the Crown Prosecution
Service have, in comparison to the quarterly average in 2019,
more than doubled and exceed the 2016 average.
Charges are also increasing nationally from 3.6% between April
and June 2021 to 4.5% between April and June 2022.
To further drive improvements in the policing response to rape we
are:
- supporting the College of Policing and Operation Soteria
academics to create new learning and training products which
better meet the needs of investigators
- bringing in new powers into force to stop unnecessary and
intrusive requests for victims’ phones, which is a vital change
in law that puts an end to the practice of ‘digital strip search’
- supporting police forces to ensure that no victim of rape is
left without a phone for more than 24 hours, with the vast
majority of forces in a position to do so by the end of March
2023; and
- completed a public consultation exploring the issues
regarding police requests for third party material with a
response and next steps due for publication shortly.
