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<p>Rape and sexual violence are devastating crimes that can have an impact on victims
for the rest of their life. The most recent published annual data shows that in the
year to December 2021, the volume of police recorded rape offences rose to the highest
ever recorded figure at 67,125. We welcome the fact that victims of sexual offences,
which are all too often hidden crimes, are bravely coming forward to report to the
police.</p><p>In June 2021, the Government published its End-to-End Rape Review Findings
and Action Plan. The Action Plan set out a robust programme of work to drive improvements
in the criminal justice system’s (CJS) handling of adult rape cases. A year on, we
have started to see increases in the number of referrals of adult rape cases from
the police to the Crown Prosecution Service and in the number of charges.</p><p>On
June 16, we published our second six-monthly Rape Review Progress Update which sets
out the important progress that we have made, including:</p><p>o The Home Office is
providing £5m in 2022/3 to support the expansion into a further 14 police forces of
Operation Soteria, which will develop a new national operating model for police forces
to adopt by June 2023;</p><p>o Running a public consultation on the police requests
for third-party material, which can sometimes be unnecessary and disproportionate;
and</p><p>o Continuing to make progress towards the target of recruiting 20,000 additional
police officers by March 2023. As of March 2022, the Home Office had supported the
recruitment of 13,578 police officers, and in 2022/3 we have allocated £550m to achieve
the target of 20,000 officers by March 2023.</p><p>Accountability and transparency
are key to ensuring we achieve our ambition of doubling the volume of adult rape cases
reaching court over the Parliament. We developed a CJS delivery dashboard for recorded
adult rape offences which brings together data from across the criminal justice system.
This is published quarterly, and the most recent national and local dashboards were
published on 16 June. By closely monitoring this data we will be able to understand
the ongoing impact of our work, drive improvements and share best practice.</p><p>
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