Kate Chanter and Bethan Cowlam pick apart the government's
progress report
In February, the government published a progress report in
regard to their 'end-to-end' Rape Review.
In his article for the Daily Mail, coinciding with the
progress report, the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for
Justice, Alex Chalk KC MP, commended the progress to date,
extolling that the report, 'shows more rapists being brought to
trial, with the number of adult prosecutions higher than in 2020,
and sentences up by around a third'.
While an aim of the criminal justice system is of course to
fairly and successfully prosecute those individuals who are guilty
of rape, some of the actions in the report appear to miss certain
key rights of defendants. The report is aimed at instilling
confidence in those who report sexual offences. However, the rights
of defendants mustn't be jettisoned in the process. History has
shown that trimming back crucial protections for convenience
