Thousands of reports of rape allegations have been inaccurately recorded by the police over the past three years and in some cases never appeared in official figures, the Guardian can reveal.

More help for rape victims is essential. The CPS and police must change their attitudes | Vera Baird Read more

An analysis shows the vast majority of police forces audited by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services (HMICFRS) have failed to collect accurate rape crime figures, resulting in cases going unrecorded and investigations not being carried out, raising the possibility that perpetrators could go on to reoffend. More than one in 10 audited rape reports were found to be incorrect.

The Guardian found complainants with mental health and addiction issues and victims of trafficking were particularly vulnerable to being struck from the record by a number of police forces.

The Guardian reviewed audits of 34 police forces published between August 2016 and July 2019. Only three of them were found to have accurately recorded complaints of rape, according to the audits carried out by HMICFRS. Of the more than 4,900 audited rape reports, 552 were found to be inaccurate.

As every report of rape is not audited it is not possible to know exactly how many are inaccurate, but more than 150,000 rapes were reported to police in that time which means potentially more than 10,000 cases could be affected by inaccuracies.

The inaccuracies in recording can range from incomplete paperwork to not recording a report of rape as a crime but noting it as an incident. This can lead to no investigation being carried out and the accused going on to reoffend. The data also found that a number of forces failed to improve in subsequent inspections, with some getting worse.

Vera Baird, the victims’ commissioner for England and Wales, said it appeared police were failing to investigate reports.

“Where cases are not being recorded as a crime and are dismissed as an incident, that’s a concern because it may be that if the cases were investigated they could result in a prosecution. We know rape is a serial offence so it should be a very considered decision not to pursue something that looks like a rape as a crime of rape,” said Baird.

A spokesman for the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) said victims should have the confidence to report crimes knowing that they would be investigated and support would be provided.

“The rate of rape reporting to police forces has sharply increased since 2014, and we are working to further improve the accuracy of crime reporting, which is governed by detailed counting rules set out by the Home Office. The accurate recording of crime can be influenced by many factors which may not be clear at the beginning of an investigation,” the spokesman added.

A spokesperson for HMICFRS said although recording of sexual offence crimes by police had improved since 2014 they could not definitively say if there had been an improvement in rape recording.

Inspections of police forces also found that vulnerable women, including those with mental health issues, addiction issues, or those reporting rape in a domestic abuse situation or who had been trafficked into prostitution were particularly at risk of having their cases ignored by police in a number of forces.

In one instance a rape was reported to Greater Manchester police but the case was not recorded as a crime. The victim was in a secure mental health facility and officers did not investigate further after staff from the facility assessed that the victim “lacked the capacity to make an informed complaint”. The police later made direct contact with the victim, recorded the crime and it was under investigation in 2018. However, the force was unable to provide further details about the case based on the available information when contacted by the Guardian.

In North Yorkshire in 2017 a report of a victim with mental health issues was not recorded as a rape as “officers did not properly understand how to deal with her ability to consent”, according to an audit of the police force. She subsequently reported being raped again by the same person. The force has since investigated the case although there was no prosecution.

A spokesman for North Yorkshire police said: “It was not possible to bring about a prosecution due to several factors, including the victim declining to engage with the police, which made gathering enough information for a prosecution extremely challenging. Extensive safeguarding measures have been put in place by the police and other organisations to support the victim.”

Louise Ellison, a professor of law at the University of Leeds, has researched outcomes for vulnerable complainants reporting rape. She found that cases involving complainants with mental health issues were significantly less likely to be referred to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).

Ellison said: “People within the system who support victims of rape will tell you quite candidly that there are women who are coming in through their doors on quite a regular basis reporting rape and their cases are never appropriately investigated by the police.

“Their cases go nowhere because they are automatically assumed to be lacking in credibility. People within the system know this but the frustrating thing is that there doesn’t seem to be any real focus on it.”

The latest figures from the police and CPS reveal that the criminal justice system is failing to keep up with the increase in the number of rapes reported.

Recorded rape has more than doubled since 2013-14 to 58,657 cases in 2018-19. However, police are referring fewer cases for prosecution and the CPS is charging, prosecuting and winning fewer cases. The number of cases resulting in a conviction is lower than it was more than a decade ago.

The Guardian reported in September 2018 that senior staff at the CPS had urged prosecutors to take the “weak cases out of the system”, in order to improve its conviction rate for rape.

A review of the treatment of rape cases within the criminal justice system was announced by the government in March 2019. The review covers the response from a moment a crime is reported to the police until conviction or acquittal in court.

“We are conducting an end-to-end review into the criminal justice response to rape,” a government spokesperson said, “which will help us to better understand the decline in cases reaching the courts and improve our overall response.

“We are taking action to restore public confidence in the justice system by recruiting 20,000 more police, creating extra prison places and reviewing sentencing to make sure violent and sexual offenders are properly punished.”

Methodology

The Guardian scraped all the crime data integrity audits from the HMICFRS website to examine how police forces are recording rape. Once the data was collected it was structured and analysed to find how many forces were inaccurately recording rape reports.