Rape culture in government

[Content note: abuse of power, rape]

There was a debate in Parliament yesterday regarding undercover policing, raised by Caroline Lucas MP (Green, Brighton Pavilion).

One of the issues raised was the practice by police infiltrating a group suspected of criminal activity of forming sexual relationships with the members of that group (so far, the cases which have received publicity have all involved male police officers and female members of the group).

It is of course fairly likely that many of the people with whom the undercover officers formed sexual relationships would not have done so had they known that the other person was an undercover police officer. As Lucas states:

The eight women allege that the men’s actions constitute a breach of articles 3 and 8 of the European convention on human rights. Article 3 asserts that no one shall be subject to inhuman or degrading treatment, and article 8 grants respect for private and family life, including the right to form relationships without unjustified interference by the state. The women go on to allege that the actions amount to common law tortious acts of deceit, misfeasance in public office and assault.

It's not at all clear to me from a reading of the precedent and legislation whether people in a similar situation could also allege rape, as has been suggested (and rightly, because morally it is). It hinges on what "capacity to consent" means in the legislation, and the positive precedents generally have elements which are clearer than in this sort of case¹.

In that context, the government's answer is disturbing.

Nick Herbert MP (Conservative, Arundel and South Downs), the relevant Minister, replies - regarding the legality of this under RIPA, an issue which remains untested by the courts and on which a number of conflicting public statements have been made by the police:

What matters is that there is a general structure and system of proper oversight and control, rather than specific directions on behaviour that may or may not be permitted. Moreover, to ban such actions would provide a ready-made test for the targeted criminal group to find out whether an undercover officer was deployed among them. Specifically forbidding the action would put the issue in the public domain and such groups would know that it could be tested.

So it's okay for an undercover police officer to commit actions morally (and possibly legally) constituting rape, if to do otherwise would put their cover at risk, according to the government.

Herbert doesn't explicitly state it one way or the other, but presumably given some of the other cases that Lucas raised, he also considers it legitimate for an undercover police officer to plant a live incendiary device in a public area, if to refuse would put their cover at risk (a blanket ban on committing life-threatening acts of terrorism would obviously make it too easy for terrorist groups to out undercover officers, right?).

Footnote

¹ Generally one of:

1. The offender viewed the act as sexual but convinced their victim(s) that it wasn't (e.g. fake medical examinations)
2. The offender had used some sort of threats or pressure
3. The offender was pretending to be an entirely different person (as opposed to presenting a different identity of the same person). The distinction between the two is not trivial, given how many people have extremely legitimate reasons to have multiple identities for different contexts.

One of the things that makes me angry about this sort of case is that I can't think of a way to word legislation such that (under rape culture: the existing legislation would be more than adequate if we weren't) this would be illegal, but legitimate omissions about one's past or other identities would not be, especially in the context of a government (and much of the populace) which believes that people can legitimately only have one identity.

The Government Inequalities Office

The recent newsletter from the Government Equalities Office can basically be summed up as "Well, it's all a bit difficult. Let's not bother". It's the result of their previous "regulation is evil" review.

The measures announced today include:

Repealing Third Party Harassment law, which will ensure employers are no longer liable for the harassment of an employee by a third party (for example, a customer). A consultation on this change is launched today.

The Law Gazette has a summary of the existing law, and the case law it's based on.

Note that it firstly requires this to happen more than once and secondly requires that the employer could reasonably have done something about it but didn't.

The 'Bernard Manning' case (which held that the employer was liable for inviting a racist and sexist comedian to insult their staff, even though the comedian was not a direct employee) is fairly important since third parties include suppliers and contractors.

It's not clear that repealing this part will actually stop employers being liable, as the Equalities Office apparently holds the view that all harassment is direct discrimination, and of course the case law establishing liability predated the law they're going to repeal. Unless they intend to repeal it by adding a statement that employers are explicitly not liable, of course, which is unlikely to stand up in court.

Next...

Reviewing the Public Sector Equality Duty - a legal obligation on public bodies to consider the impact of their decisions on different groups - to establish whether it is operating as intended.

Repealing the Socio-Economic Duty - a legal obligation on public bodies to consider the impact of their decisions on social class.

I'd be more worried about the first point if the government had not repeatedly shown that it's completely trivial to ignore it anyway, if you are the government. Repealing the Socio-Economic Duty is hardly surprising either, given how obviously they've been ignoring it so far.

Then...

Tackling gold-plating and over-compliance by working with the British Chambers of Commerce to help small-and-medium-sized companies understand what they do and don't need to do in order to comply with the Equality Act.

We must remember that the Act's purpose is to give plausible deniability when people are discriminated against. Some companies have got confused and gone beyond this to attempt to actually stop the discrimination.

Repealing employment tribunals' 'wider recommendations' powers, which will remove the power of tribunals to recommend the introduction of, or changes to, policies that affect all of an employer's staff - not just the employee who brought the case. A consultation on this change is launched today.

We must remember that it is far more effective, and good for the employer, if they have to deal with several separate discrimination cases for the same issue, rather than a tribunal being able to suggest a way to improve general practice after the first one.

The "individual solution to systematic problem" approach of course never fails to keep discriminated-against people from causing too much trouble.

And a bunch to do with the EHRC

Repealing unnecessary powers and duties. Some of the EHRC's powers and duties under the Equality Act 2006 will be scrapped in order to help it focus on its core functions.

Tighter financial controls. The EHRC will comply with government-wide spending rules - in particular, controls on recruitment, consultancy and marketing.

Budget review. The EHRC's budget was cut by over half as part of the 2010 Spending Review. There will now be a comprehensive review of the remainder of the EHRC's budget, to be completed this autumn.

New leadership. A new Chairman and a new, smaller Board will be recruited.

"Having funding, powers, and staff is interfering with the EHRC's duty to pretend everything is fine. We will review this."

They're not necessarily the most useful or sensible organisation, but I doubt these changes will help.

...all in all, about what you'd expect from the Conservative Party.

About four years ago, you couldn't talk about an issue like this without a Lib Dem popping up to say that they were the only major party to have:

Upholding these values of individual and social justice, we reject all prejudice and discrimination based upon race, colour, religion, age, disability, sex or sexual orientation and oppose all forms of entrenched privilege and inequality.

in their Constitution. The lack of an entry for "social class" is telling, in light of the above repeals, isn't it.

I haven't seen a Lib Dem mention that for a while now. Whether that's because there are fewer Lib Dems or because they've realised that like a lot of Constitutional statements it's basically meaningless words, I'm not sure.

Keep poor people out

The BBC reports that:

The government has pledged to cut net migration from 242,000 - the figure for the year ending September 2010 - to the "tens of thousands" last seen in the 1990s.

It plans to do this by making the UK such an unpleasant place to live that large numbers of current residents leave.

Well, no. That's just a happy side effect of its other policies. It plans to directly do this by setting a really high minimum salary - over £31,000, or more than 75% of existing workers earn.

Because the Conservatives are a pro-family party, people wishing to live with their non-EU partner in this country will be subject to a somewhat less strict standard. Their partner need only earn around £20,000, or around median wage, to be allowed in.

(Their pro-business and pro-British credentials are going to take a bit of a hit from this "minimum wage increased for foreigners only" policy, too)

Two quick thoughts

ATOS are apparently getting rid of internal email. Apparently it's to improve productivity, which may be true, but I expect - given the dubious nature of what our government employs them to do - that the more transient nature of instant messages compared with email is a big bonus.

Meanwhile, in good news for future ATOS contracts, polling suggests an increasing number of people are blaming poverty on poor people and less willing to pay taxes to help others. Mark Easton says:

One would expect that when the economy goes down people become a little less judgmental of those in need but this year's report finds 26% of people feel poverty is the result of 'laziness' or 'lack of willpower'. In the mid-1990s that figure was down to 15%.

I'm not sure - benefit of hindsight! - one would expect that. Obviously as people get into worse financial situations, their likelihood of being in favour of extra taxes on them personally decreases. Also, of course, there's an important psychological effect of blaming poverty on the poor - if it was due to flaws in character or morals which you, of course, do not share, then it won't happen to you. It's not surprising in these times that the increased number of people who need reassurance it won't happen to them outweighs the increased number of people who know so many exceptions that they know the causes are bigger than that. So far, anyway.

Assume a spherical frictionless population

So, we've got the government sponsoring a review of sick leave, that essentially recommends that we treat people with acute health conditions in the same way that we now deal with chronic and terminal health conditions.

Latentexistence at Where's the Benefit? has more on the particular problems with this proposal, which I won't try to duplicate here. I want to focus on the last sentence of the article for what it says about government overall:

The DWP spokesman said: "The economy loses £15bn in lost economic output each year due to sickness absence and we cannot continue to foot this bill."

Interesting claim... After quite a bit of searching, I can't find a source for this. I have found:

• Several other unsourced repetitions of the figure, sometimes accompanied by a claim that there are 150 million working days lost annually in the UK due to sickness absence.
• One claim that £12bn (instead) in economic output is lost, but 200 million working days are lost
• Claims in the original press release for the review that the total cost of sickness absence (which is not the same as lost output) is £100bn, £60bn of which is paid by the government.

However, it does seem fairly clear that the main assumption for losses and costs is as compared with an economy where no-one was ever ill.

On that measure, we "waste" about £70 million annually on street lighting, compared with an idealised country which flies around the world on jet engines so that the sun never sets on it, or a country populated entirely by people genetically modified to have sonar.

People are people. They get ill. I'm all in favour of reducing the amount that people get ill through advances in medical science, good¹ public health initiatives, improved safety measures, more efficient treatments, and so on. But anyone seriously basing their government policy essentially on the assumption that people should never be seriously ill has such a bizarre idea² of what humans are that they shouldn't be in charge of the country.

And it leads to policies like this where the sickness absence itself, and by extension the person who is ill, gets treated as the problem - when actually it's a symptom of the facts that we don't have sci-fi medical technology now, that we have unsafe and unhealthy working environments (especially for mental health), that we place toxins into the environment far more than we should be, and so on.

That's what's "costing" us the £15bn in "lost output", not people being ill. Not getting that distinction - and so making a policy based on the belief that people shouldn't be ill (which is not unique to our current central government) - means policies like this, which are likely to make the situation worse, not better, and so cost the economy even more overall - and a lot of ill people a great deal personally.

Footnote

¹ i.e. non-dehumanising

² Admittedly, the ablist idea that "not ill" is normal and "ill" is deviant is so common that finding a member of government who doesn't believe that may take some work - but as with many discriminatory assumptions they just sound silly if you say them explicitly.

Loitering within tent

[trigger warning: state violence]

Why aren't the people in charge simply ignoring the Occupy movement? It's not obvious to me.

Petitions, protests, marches, letter-writing campaigns, voting - all can be and are largely ignored by elected politicians. A representative who is already sympathetic to their cause can use these things to be more forceful in Parliament. With consistent effort of this sort over many years, then the number of sympathetic representatives in Parliament can be grown and public opinion can be altered - but this is an extremely slow process and as, for instance, the blatant racism or heterosexism shown by some MPs today demonstrates, can be ignored at will by an unsympathetic representative.

The "ultimate sanction" of making them lose elections is only a statistical deterrent. A party may occasionally lose power temporarily - though that was going to happen anyway - but individual representatives in safe seats (and there are equivalents in almost all electoral systems) can stay in office as long as they want.

So, given that, what is it about Occupy that stops it being ignored. Look at it entirely from an abstract point of view - ignore the aims, just look at the methods.

• A protest march will, if it's large enough, block off multiple streets in a major city for several hours. Normal day-to-day life is disrupted over a large area. Then, everything returns to normal, and it gets pushed back in to the pile of previous marches.
• Occupy take an area of public space, put some tents up, and stay there. The vast majority of the city continues as normal - indeed, from a distance, it's not obviously there - and even nearby it's generally relatively straightforward to walk around them. Generally, far fewer people are participating at any one time, in any particular Occupy location, than would appear at any medium-sized protest march in the same city.

The only thing that makes it more "disruptive" than a protest march is the permanence in a public space. But alone, that's not particularly disruptive¹. They may be a reminder of something governments and the powerful don't like to be reminded of - but they should be an easily avoidable and ignorable reminder. The late Brian Haw camped outside Parliament for years without changing policy, and only really made the news on the (many) occasions where they tried to have him removed.

Likewise, while the Occupy movements are - to a greater or lesser extent - trying to develop alternatives to the established order, that they're doing so in a square in the rain, instead of on an internet forum or on a commune somewhere out of the way, shouldn't be particularly threatening. It's not as if people merely walking by are going to pick up the interesting details of that, as opposed to a few messages and slogans on signs.

It seems fairly obvious to me that if the governments and powerful had completely ignored Occupy Wall Street, giving non-committal platitudes about the right to protest and "they can stay if they want[, I don't care]" if anyone asked, then it would not have reached the numbers it has - across North America and Europe - and not have received anything like as much press coverage.

Occupy LSX has pretty much only been in the news since it started over disputes as to whether they should be "allowed" to stay there or forcibly removed. The reasons they're actually there are getting very little press coverage. If they'd been passively allowed to continue without interference, then they'd still be there, of course - but no-one who didn't physically go past them would have noticed.

Similarly, the recent attacks on Occupy Oakland - and now New York and Seattle, at least - and the slightly less aggressive ongoing policing and "health and safety" disruptions of the sites - may have deterred some people from attending ... but they've also kept the protests in the news, encouraged the protestors, often grown their numbers overall, and made them think that their strategy is working.

Gandhi's "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win" statement has been repeated to the point of cliché about Occupy - but while their eventual victory (and what that might mean, anyway) is still nowhere near inevitable, they're larger in number and angrier as a result of governments and the powerful not being content to remain at the "ignore" stage.

So why try to repress them so much? It can't be the ideas alone. There's nothing new in their ideas (and that is not a criticism!) - and there's nothing new about a significant angry minority holding those ideas. The economic collapse has made more people receptive to those ideas, and the Occupy camps mean that (a few) more people hear about those ideas.

It also can't be about permission to hold those ideas and express them publicly. The only part unique to Occupy is "in a square" or "in a tent". Again, if ignored, they wouldn't be powerful there.

It can't be personal inconvenience or conscience. If the powerful had those, then plenty of other forms of protest would either be more rapidly effective, or more heavily restricted, or both.

It can't be about "health and safety" or other such concerns. The only health and safety potentially being affected is generally that of the people inside the Occupy camps - which they obviously don't care about. Yes, the protests may after legal argument be found to be breaking some technicality of the law. But probably most protest marches could after the fact be found to have done the same. It's largely irrelevant to whether they can be ignored, and it's more focus on enforcing every single law at once than ever gets applied anywhere else. Enforcing laws - and making up new laws to enforce - is a means, but it can't be the end in itself.

It shouldn't be about personal fear - hundreds of thousands of people in a square like Tahrir Square can be threatening to a government: that's enough people that if they did turn out to be armed revolutionaries they could do some serious damage to the government even if the police and army stayed loyal - and a sign of enough popular support that a dictator can't rely enough on their loyalty. So Egypt's government fell.

But a few hundred people? Maybe a few thousand at the biggest? That's not dangerous. They're not even particularly close to government buildings, or the offices of the truly powerful. Even if they were all armed to the teeth if they tried anything violent they would go down very quickly in the "fatally failed revolutionaries" list. And clearly if they were armed and shooting, the loyalty of the police and army is nowhere near weak enough yet in North America or Europe to end up defecting: the recent police assaults on Occupy should show they don't have a problem there.

So - there seems to be nothing to lose by simply ignoring Occupy like they ignore every other protest and fringe movement. And much more to lose by attacking them through the courts and through violence, thereby increasing anger and public sympathy. So why pick that strategy?

I really don't get it. What do the rich and powerful know that I don't that makes Occupy so specifically threatening to them that they're willing to take such disproportionate and panicked action to try - counter-productively - to stop them? What am I missing here?

Footnotes

¹ If the public space is "across a major motorway" or "in the middle of Oxford Street" or "right where you wanted to build a block of flats" or "in front of the gates of a military base", then it's definitely very disruptive. But that's not what Occupy is doing.

A tale of two anti-rape posters.

[trigger warning]

On the bus this morning I saw a poster I'd not seen before - I think it's a new one - from the local police forces. It was an anti-rape poster, and unlike this recently spotted poster from South Wales Police, it was actually a fairly good one.

I cannot find a picture of it anywhere online, and I wasn't able to take one myself, so I'll try to describe it from memory. (If anyone has a picture of this poster, please let me know!)

• Right quarter of the poster: image, grey scale, of the casually-dressed upper legs and body of a light-skinned man, holding the bars of a cell with both hands.
• Most of the rest of the poster is text, which I'm not going to get word-for-word - but in paraphrase. Top line: "don't commit rape or this could happen to you". Then, below that, three examples of things which are rape.
• First example: "If she's too drunk to say 'yes', she's too drunk to say 'no'"
• Second example: "If she's under 16, even if she consents, it's illegal and you could be arrested."
• Third example: "No matter how many times she's said 'yes' before, she can still say 'no'. Rape of your wife or partner is still rape."
• Finally, the phone number for the local police forces, and their logos.

I'm sure experts in the field could suggest areas for improvement, but compared with the usual standard for these posters, I was actually pleased to see it. It keeps its focus on the perpetrators, making very clear that their self-justifications for their actions will not be accepted - while at the same time also giving the same message to the enablers who help perpetuate these myths, and the victims who might end up being told them so much they come to believe them.

It also reminded me, because of its contrast to the South Wales poster, that I had a letter to write - so here it is. I thought about sending it directly to the government departments, but my MP - unsurprisingly - tends to get more useful replies than I do.

Dear [MP],

I was today pleased to see an anti-rape poster, produced by the local police force, that focuses strongly on the perpetrators and sets out examples of situations where they do not have consent despite their beliefs. This reminded me of the large continuing regional variation in the success of the criminal justice system in this area, as revealed most recently by the BBC through Freedom of Information requests at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/uk/11/acpo_rape_stats/xls/rapestatistics.xls

As Baroness Stern found in her report on rape prosecutions, the existing guidance is followed extremely inconsistently. If every police force had the report to charge rate of Durham (60.8%), and if every CPS region had the ability to avoid dropping cases before trial that Dorset has (only 5.4% dropped), and if every CPS region had the success in securing convictions at trial of regions such as Warwickshire (87.0%), then half of all reported rapes would result in a conviction for the rapist (either of rape or a lesser offence)

This rate is potentially achievable without any new policies or procedures - simply by following existing best practice. Furthermore, the rapidity with which some police forces and CPS regions have achieved improvements in detection and conviction rates recently suggests that - with enough political will - this conviction rate could be achieved within a decade at most.

Would you be able to contact the relevant Ministers at the Home Office and Justice to ask them:

1. if they will set as a national target that by 2020 the police and CPS will secure convictions in at least 50% of all reported serious sexual offence cases?
2. what steps they are taking to ensure that best practice is replicated quickly across all police forces and CPS regions?
3. what additional steps will they take in future to ensure that the situation improves?

Thank you

Yours sincerely

[me]

Feel free to adapt this letter to your own MP, of course.

Useful tools: Write to Them

One of the most useful tools for interacting with party politics, on the occasions it becomes necessary, is Write to Them. It always slightly startles me when I see someone encouraging people to write to their MP about an issue and not linking to Write to Them, because it's just so useful. So: a quick summary, to hopefully make it more widely known about.

Enter your postcode (they have advice if your postcode isn't obvious) and you will then be able to contact any of your elected representatives (local councils, devolved administrations, MPs, and European representatives) - advice on which representative deals with what - or any member of the House of Lords.

Essentially it takes all the boring work out of:

• Finding out who your representatives are
• Finding out what party your representatives are
• Finding out how to contact them
• Finding stamps, fax machines, or whatever devices are needed

...leaving much more time to do the necessary hard work of researching the issue and constructing a persuasive message.

Sadly, it can't guarantee a reply (and certainly not a useful one), but most messages are replied to within 2-3 weeks.

Eviction of people loosely connected to a riot.

Here's the consultation on eviction of social tenants. Question 1 is perhaps the most important question, which would allow social landlords to evict tenants where they - or a member of their household - was convicted of certain violent crimes anywhere in the UK. Got to keep the tabloids happy.

Wandsworth and Southwark councils are trying to get ahead of the consultation, and are just doing it anyway. An actual law explicitly allowing it would mean that the only practical challenge might be to the European courts - well beyond the financial and legal means of most social tenants.

Here's what they're proposing.

We are therefore proposing to include additional provisions in Ground 2 of Schedule 2 to the Housing Act 1985 and Ground 14 of Schedule 2 to the Housing Act 1988 so that the court may grant possession where a tenant or member of their household has been convicted of violence against property (including criminal damage and offences such as arson), violence against persons at a scene of violent disorder or theft linked to violent disorder. There would in these circumstances be no requirement that the offence had been committed within the locality of the dwelling house, subject to it being committed in the United Kingdom.

Note that violence against persons must be connected to "a scene of violent disorder", but violence against property need not. Well, property is more important than people to the government. We knew that.

So, here's my response to that suggestion.

Question 1: No. The current grounds for possession should not be extended in this way. Where a tenant has been convicted of a serious crime, there already exists legal mechanisms for them to be fined, imprisoned, or given a community sentence - whatever the court believes appropriate in this particular case.

A major problem with eviction as proposed is that it makes all members of the household responsible for the behaviour of all other members of the household. Where the eviction applies to long-standing anti-social or criminal behaviour committed in the immediate locality of the housing, then requiring this mutual responsibility may be justifiable in some cases - other members of the household may have been aware of the anti-social or criminal activity for some time, and been able to discourage or prevent it. However, a de facto requirement for all members of a household to keep a sufficiently close watch on each other so that they cannot possibly commit criminal offences elsewhere is not justifiable.

Forcing someone to lose their tenancy in response to criminal behaviour committed by a fellow tenant completely unrelated to the housing or their own actions seems completely unjust, and would seem to open the landlord to challenges on human rights grounds.

Furthermore, it brings about perverse incentives. Other members of the household who might ordinarily testify against a person accused of criminal offences would in this situation know that doing so could result in them losing their own tenancies! The temptation to help the accused construct an alibi would be very great.

A third problem is that the original power, by applying to criminal or anti-social behaviour in the vicinity of the housing, has an important use in protecting others living in the same housing from this behaviour - though, as paragraph 1.5 of the consultation document points out, it may sometimes only move rather than solve problems.

Where applied to crimes committed a long distance from the housing, this use vanishes. The crime is not connected to the housing, so removing the tenants from the housing cannot affect the crimes. The convicted tenants have to live somewhere, so removing them from their present housing will make little difference.

Imprisonment is already available as an option to the courts where someone needs to be removed from general society to prevent crime, and this is both more appropriate and avoids punishing people who did not commit the crime.

If you have time, please read the consultation document and send in your own response. I know I haven't covered everything that's wrong with the proposals in mine. With the riots falling away into the distance - and the underlying causes ignored to produce more later - the need to do this to appease the reactionary press might be avoided.

Government-mandated weight. The inevitable consequence.

[trigger warning]

Unfortunately, I'm not at all surprised that this has happened. A UK Council is taking steps to have four of a family's seven children forcibly adopted (or fostered without contact).

Why? Because the children are fat, and have continued being fat against the local government's demands. Clearly the solution is to take them away from their parents - and perhaps away from each other, too - in the hope that the massive added stress will cause weight loss.

According to all the press reports, the family have "faced no accusations of deliberate abuse or cruelty". Their solicitor has previously stated that "obesity was the main reason for the children being taken from their parents".

The rather flawed research on "obesity" is a contributing cause, but this goes way beyond that. I'm unimpressed with the government's research on "obesity" in children. But, even if that research is accepted at face value, the only detectable effects of "obesity" in children are "low self-esteem and behavioural problems" and a greater chance of being "obese" in later life.

On the basis of that research - even accepting that research as high quality and accurate, which I don't - there is absolutely no cause for intervention in this case. Either:

1. Weight is largely not under a person's control. In this case, adoption won't change their weight. But it probably will harm their psychological state, especially since there's no reason to do it. Despite this stance being supported by the scientific literature, "everyone knows" means that more likely the council believe option 2...
2. Weight is entirely under a person's control. In this case, the effects of being heavy at their age are comparable to the effects of being adopted. There being no evidence of abuse or cruelty, the only effects are psychological - which must be compared with the psychological harm of adoption, including the effects on their older siblings. The children, when they get to adulthood, can then "choose to be thin" and suffer no long-term effects.

In either case, there's no reason to forcibly remove them from their family. Which should be obvious.

The only case where it isn't obvious is where you believe that "obesity" is basically an evil zombie cult. Fat people will exist near you and brainwash you into being fat. It's therefore imperative to get those children who could be un-brainwashed away from their family as soon as possible. Accepting that premise, Dundee Council's actions seem reasonable.

It's also not impossible that the Council's actions have been completely misreported. With multiple news entries several years apart, a verifiable trail in public record for at least some of the events, and several different news organisations covering this in different ways, though, that seems less likely. The Council hasn't denied any of it - merely issued a vague statement that "The council always acts in the best interests of children, with their welfare and safety in mind." which seems to be the well-known PR tactic of "lying outrageously" rather than a severely misreported case.

Big Fat Blog has contact details for four senior Council officers. I've sent them the following message.

Dear Sirs,

The recent news that Dundee Council is planning to place four children from a family of seven to either be adopted or fostered without contact, for the sole reason that they are heavier than the Council approves of, and in the absence of any deliberate abuse or cruelty by their parents, are, if accurate, extremely disturbing.

I hope that if the press reports are accurate you will be reconsidering this decision and the policies which led to it immediately, as it seems to me to be a strong infringement of the family's rights, and not in the interests of any of their seven children.

I realise that you are unable to comment on the details of any individual case for the family's privacy, and so therefore I am confining my questions to general Council policy. If the reporting is inaccurate, then your policies should provide sufficient evidence of this without the need to discuss this specific case.

1) Under what circumstances, if any, does the Council take the weight of a parent or child into account when deciding what interventions are necessary?

2) Under what circumstances, if any, would the Council require an individual to alter their weight?

3) If there are any circumstances as described in my first two questions, could you explain the reasoning behind these policies, and provide me with any research used in developing these policies.

Thank you

Since I don't live anywhere near Dundee, which is itself in a different legal and administrative jurisdiction to my own, I doubt I'll get a reply.

Regional variation in rape prosecutions.

[trigger warning]

The BBC has collated statistics from all English and Welsh police forces to compile data on rape investigations. A spreadsheet (Excel) with the full data is available.

In summary - and much more details below: there is massive variation between police regions in how well rape cases are handled, but if every force followed current "best practice", then over 40% of reported rapes could result in the rapist being convicted.

The BBC's angle in the reporting is in the massive variance in "no crime" classification of reports. This is an update of very similar research they did, which I wrote about briefly two years ago.

As in the BBC's previous study, and as in earlier similar studies carried out by the Fawcett Society, the main finding is of massive variation from region to region.

Reporting rates by region do not vary significantly - though there is a little variation between Cheshire (0.17 per 1,000 population) and London (0.43 per 1,000 population).

On marking reports as "no crime", the rate varies between 2.4% in Gloucestershire and 30.0% in Kent. A small number of "no crimes" is expected - Kelly, Lovett and Regan's 2005 study gives several good reasons (other than the stereotypical "false accusation") why this might occur. However, it's clear from the discrepancies that a lot of police forces are heavily overusing this method of closing a case.

The "sanction detection" rate also shows significant variation between regions. This is the rate at which reported cases result in either a charge against a suspect, or the police formally cautioning a suspect. (The latter is relatively unusual in rape cases, though still uncomfortably common).

In Lincolnshire and Bedfordshire, only 11.1% and 11.8% of cases include a "sanction detection". In Durham, the figure is 60.8%, and in South Wales, 49.8%. Again, there's clearly a major difference in procedures.

Once the case has moved to the CPS for prosecution, there are again regional variations. Ignoring Lincolnshire as an outlier, as the police are clearly only passing the most obvious of cases to the CPS there, Nottinghamshire CPS drop 36.3% of cases before court. Dorset CPS only drop 5.4%.

Then, in court, the conviction rates again vary - Surrey, Dyfed-Powys, and Hampshire have conviction rates in court less than 60%. (Dyfed-Powys occasionally get confused and prosecute the victim instead). Meanwhile Warwickshire, Devon and Cornwall, and Leicestershire are able to secure a conviction in around 85% of court cases (not always for rape, though - sometimes for lesser offences).

Multiplying the various attrition rates together isn't completely valid (the figures for prosecutions are not for the same cases as the sanction detections) but gives a rough indication of the combined effectiveness of the local police and CPS, without having to do the massive longitudinal studies that Kelly, Lovett and Regan did, where there is almost a five-fold difference between the most and least effective forces. (Since this is only a rough estimate, I won't name the 'best' and 'worst' regions)

Baroness Stern's report on rape prosecutions strongly noted that investigation and prosecution would be considerably more effective if everyone just followed the guidelines that had already been written.

Cross-tabulating the various figures against each other suggests that - with the exception of a few outliers such as Nottinghamshire - the effectiveness of the CPS in prosecuting cases doesn't depend much (or even at all) on what proportion of cases the police pass to them. In other words it is generally not the case that the police referring more cases to the CPS will just lead to the CPS either dropping those cases or being unable to secure a conviction.

We can therefore also look at a theoretical "best" region, which improves its "sanction detection" and "conviction" rates to the best found in real regions, by application of best practice.

The result of this is not particularly surprising, perhaps. The theoretical "best" region - merely on current best practice in policing, investigations, prosecutions, and court cases - would be able to secure convictions, if not for rape then at least for some sexual offence¹, in around 40% of all reported cases.

Furthermore, best practice is continuing to improve - that "theoretical" figure is itself noticeably increased from even two years ago.

It wouldn't be impossible - police forces have made significant improvements in only a few years before - for that 40% figure to be achieved by the end of this decade. If that doesn't happen, it will be solely because it wasn't considered a high priority.

I'll be writing to the Ministry of Justice (responsible for the CPS) and the Home Office (responsible for the police) soon to ask what plans they have to ensure that under-performing police forces are rapidly brought up to the level of the best.

Footnote

¹ In practice, around half will be for lesser offences.

Abortion rights - convince your MP: this could be a very close vote

More anti-choice work from the usual suspects, in the continuing attempt to gradually introduce US-style "you can only have an abortion if the moon is full on a Tuesday with the agreement of three doctors, two vicars, and a greengrocer, with a 32-hour waiting period" restrictions to the UK.

More information at Abortion Rights and The F-Word.

If you are a UK citizen or resident please write to your MP and ask them to vote against these amendments if they are discussed at Report Stage.

Initial assessments in the press suggest that the amendment might pass but by a very narrow margin. It is therefore crucial that pro-choice MPs are reminded that they need to turn up and vote against it, that wavering MPs are convinced to vote against it, and that anti-choice MPs are given sufficient doubts that they abstain.

You can get a rough idea of how MPs are likely to vote at Public Whip - anyone who voted 'No' on that vote will likely vote 'No' on the amendment too. However, it's quite possible that many of those who voted 'Yes' can also be convinced to vote 'No' this time. If your MP isn't newly-elected, then you may be able to use this information to tailor your letter to their views.

Also potentially in our favour is that the Health and Social Care Bill itself is highly controversial - it has already been returned to Committee for a massive rewrite once, after major public objections and serious Lib Dem uneasiness with its content. Adding an entirely separate controversial issue to it has the potential to wreck the whole Bill, and this may explain the news that the government is now unlikely to support the amendment.

Nevertheless, we can't take any votes for granted.

Here's my letter.

I am writing concerning the amendments proposed by Nadine Dorries MP and Frank Field MP to the Health and Social Care Bill.

The amendments would prevent any non-NHS body that provides termination of pregnancy (including those providing those services on behalf of the NHS) from also offering counselling to women considering abortion.

This principle - that advice should be given by someone entirely unrelated to the provider - is not demanded, and nor should it be, for any other medical procedure.

Furthermore, women seeking abortions who feel that they would like counselling already have the choice to go to any provider that they wish to, and can already choose a separate provider if they feel this would be beneficial.

These amendments act to reduce their available choices, but also - by requiring women who would not otherwise do so to seek out a separate provider for advice and counselling - will increase the time between a woman deciding to obtain an abortion and actually being provided with one. Since the earlier an abortion can be carried out, the easier and safer it is for the woman concerned, this is extremely unhelpful.

Field disingenuously portrays this as being similar to advice on pensions, where there is a conflict of interest if the company selling the pensions is also advising customers on their choice of pensions. However, this reveals more about the mindset of the amendment's sponsors than about the real situation:

• medical care is not a commercial product, and it is considered beneficial for all other medical procedures for advice to be given by the provider of the procedure. Termination of pregnancy is no different.
• counselling is explicitly not about giving advice, but about allowing a client to come to their own decisions.
• neither the NHS nor non-governmental abortion providers have an interest in maximising the number of abortions carried out (unlike a pension company which does have an interest in increasing the number of pensions it sells)

The amendment is based on a transparently false caricature of the motivations of medical professionals, and a massive underestimation of the ability of women to make decisions about their own bodies.

I ask you to please vote against these amendments if they are discussed at Report Stage on the 6th and 7th September, and to encourage your colleagues in all parties to do likewise. It is also rumoured that the Department of Health intends to implement some or all of the measures set out in these amendments without the need for legislation, and I therefore also ask you to put pressure on the Department not to do so against the will of Parliament.

Thank you

Useful tools: government consultations

On some issues, the government has a firm idea of what it wants to do, and it will go ahead and do it regardless of public opinion, expert advice, whether what it wants to do is even physically possible, and so on.

Government, however, is huge. The vast majority of issues it deals with never make it to Parliament itself, and are not so much of a party-political line in the sand. On these, the government departments tend to have more of an interest in making sure that their actions are reasonable, and that there are no embarassingly obvious-in-retrospect details that they happen to have overlooked.

Enter, the government consultation. It's easy to be cynical about them, since the majority of high-profile consultations are on the high-profile "we're doing this anyway" issues. The majority of consultations, however, are not high-profile. Some of them, the department running the consultation may consider itself lucky to get even 10 replies.

These consultations take place in the background - away from the shouting matches of Parliament, and the criticism of the tabloid press - and so they're one of the easier ways to get the government to actually listen. Of course, they won't be listening on a topic of supreme importance, but there is a good opportunity here to get some small improvements made.

I've responded to several of these "background" consultations, and in all cases the final proposal was better than the original proposal in at least one way that I had requested. Furthermore, in a couple of cases where the consultation results were published in enough detail, I was the only respondee raising certain points that became part of the final proposal.

This is not due to my secretly being an influential lobbyist (I'm not) or particularly persuasive (likewise) but because the set up of consultations is very favourable to the government listening, and because the response rate is so low that one's submissions rarely get lost in the noise.

It's therefore a great opportunity to get some non-default perspectives into government thinking.

So: a few tips for replying to consultations.

1. First, find your consultation. This is harder than it looks. Well-known organisations may get an invitation to the consultation, if it's relevant to their field. Ordinary citizens and residents do not. So, you either have to hear about it in passing elsewhere, or go looking for it. There is a search. It's not particularly good. (Still, this keeps most of the reactionary journalists away - too much effort for them - so the obscurity isn't all bad)
2. Remember that you don't need to answer all the questions. If you only have things to say on one or two, it's still worth saying them. You don't necessarily have to spend a lot of time replying.
3. If you are aware of research studies that support your argument, provide the references in your reply when summarising what they say. This will make it much easier for the civil servants who process your response to also obtain the research, if they want to.
4. "Form" responses to consultations are almost certainly pointless (though having several people co-sign a single submission is fine)
5. Check the deadlines. Consultations usually run for a few months, though because of the first point there's a fair chance you'll only find out about it a few days before the deadline.
6. Remember that you don't need to have formal qualifications or experience in an area to put forward an opinion. (Though it may be worthwhile to mention them, if you do). Generally you will be required to specify whether you are replying as an individual or on behalf of an organisation.
7. Submission formats for consultations vary. Try to use their preferred format unless it's inaccessible for you. (This being the government, they should be reasonably good about providing accessible formats if you ask)
8. Finally, tell other people about the consultation! That's how I usually find out about them.

A few current consultations that you might be interested in. The first two I've already posted about - the rest are ones I've just found now:

• Sex education (closes 30 November 2011) - more details, and my response
• EHRC religious discrimination law (closes 5 September 2011) - more details, and my response
• Family migration (closes 6 October 2011) - a consultation on the criteria for allowing family members who are not EU citizens to move to the UK.
• A new mandatory power of possession for anti-social behaviour: Consultation (closes 7 November 2011) - a consultation on allowing social landlords to evict people involved in criminal behaviour, as a reaction to the riots. This one probably counts as "we're going to do it anyway" but there may be some scope for toning down the worst aspects.
• Making Open Data Real: A Public Consultation (closes 27 October 2011) - a good opportunity to ask for a more consolidated consultation list?

Feel free to link to other consultations and/or your responses in comments.

Riots and responsibility

[Trigger warning: violence, also applies to most of the links]

So, riots. Some other reading on the subject first:

• Hangbitching: Peckham Monday
• Camila Batmanghelidjh at the Independent: Caring costs – but so do riots
• Melissa McEwan at Shakesville: On UK Riots Part 1 and Part 2
• Andy's Miscellany: Thoughts on riots
• Left Outside: Even Rioters with Blackberrys can be Poor
• Kevin Sampson at the Guardian: Liverpool riots: I remember the buzz of mob mayhem from 1981

And for some idea of the general public response:

• This rapidly-growing petition to remove all benefits from rioters (presumably after they've been released from jail) is by far the most signed petition on the government's new petitions site.
• YouGov polling reports significant majorities in favour of major escalations of force against the riots, and 33% in favour of the use of live ammunition.

My own thoughts...

There are two things that the government needs to do. Immediately, it needs to restore an approximation of order to the affected cities. The people involved in the riots do need to be arrested and tried if possible. The government are taking this - after a shaky start - pretty seriously¹, with a large police presence in city centres at night, and rapid work to arrest the rioters during the day. The rioting isn't going to be completely over for a while - but provided nothing escalates it (see footnote¹ again) then normality should return fairly soon.

As soon as that is done, however, the government needs to do a much more important task - stop this happening again.

Riots could in theory break out at any time. There are nowhere near enough police across the country to stop this. If thousands of people decide at the same time that they want to make a point through violence, it's really difficult for the police to stop this happening.

Generally, they don't, however. Most of the time, people feel they have better choices available to them, or don't co-ordinate their attempts to riot.

The police can maintain a strong presence enough to stop these riots. They cannot maintain that presence indefinitely - already officers have been on duty for much longer than they should have been. Eventually they will need to stand down - and then, if nothing has changed, it will only be one more spark needed for more riots to start.

Unfortunately, the government seems to be determined not to change anything.

Its all too clear that we have a big problem with gangs in our country. For too long there has been a lack of focus and a complete lack of respect shown by these groups of thugs.

I am clear that they are in no way representative of the vast majority of young people in our country who despise them frankly as much as the rest of us do. But there are pockets of our society that are not just broken, but frankly sick.

When we see children as young as 12 and 13 looting and laughing, when we see the disgusting sight of an injured young man with people pretending to help him while they are robbing him, it is clear there are things that are badly wrong in our society.

For me the root cause of this mindless selfishness is the same thing I have spoken about for years: it is a complete lack of responsibility in parts of our society.

People allowed to feel that the world owes them something, that their rights outweigh their responsibilities and that their actions do not have consequences. Well they do have consequences.

We need to have a clearer code of values and standards that we expect people to live by and stronger penalties if they cross the line. Restoring a stronger sense of responsibility across our society in every town in every street in ever estate is something I am determined to do.

That's David Cameron PM (Conservative) there. But with all that talk about how people should "take responsibility", it could easily have been his Opposition counterpart, Ed Miliband MP (Labour). As the Guardian reports:

He said: "Then we have got to look into the causes, why people are going around doing this. And I think there are a complex number of causes."

He said he thought it was "partly about parental responsibility, partly about gangs and some of that culture".

Pretty similar thoughts from both. In summary, the causes of the riots are that "the rioters are scum, and their parents are scum, and their culture is scum, and we should punish the lot of them".

And with that level of shallow political analysis and responsibility-dodging from our political leadership, there are always going to be people who feel that society is giving them nothing.

Today's rioters can be dealt with. Arrested. Tried. Imprisoned. Tomorrow's rioters are still going to grow up in the same hopeless situations, being blamed by the politicians for being in those situations. And in a few years we'll arrest them too, because that's far easier than trying to figure out what the real underlying problems are and then fixing them. Far easier than treating people as actual people and listening to them and taking them seriously before they get so desperate they take to the streets to loot and destroy because that's all that's left. But no. They're scum, their families are scum, and they deserve what they get. Political consensus acheived, Parliament adjourned.

I think tomorrow's Parliamentary debate will be very reluctant to look "soft on crime" and consider why these riots might be happening. Why decades of social deprivation and institutional racism and cuts to what few bits of social safety net there were might be giving people nothing left to lose by rioting. I hope I'm wrong about that, but if I am it'll have to come from the backbenches.

Footnote

¹ Populist but dangerous and largely useless measures such as water cannon and plastic bullets aside, that is. Because they worked so well in Northern Ireland.

Sex education and rape prevention: consultation response

[trigger warning]

Earlier, the Department of Education recommended this new consultation regarding the department's work on rape prevention.

Here's my response - if you have any opinions on this issue, or additional evidence for them to consider, I strongly recommend that you send a response to them as well (the consultation is open until the end of November). Many of the questions relate to details of the curriculum or teaching process, or request case studies for best practice, neither of which I'm able or qualified to provide. There were a few more general questions as well, though.

I am responding to the consultation Review of Personal, Social, Health and Economics (PSHE) Education. This is a response to question 2, though elements of this answer have relevance to questions 1 and 6c as well.

I believe that the teaching of sexual consent needs to be significantly extended, and begin (in age-appropriate terms and levels of detail) at a young age. A discussion and debunking of the various common myths around sexual consent should take place before any of the children are likely to become sexually active with their peers, and this should be reinforced throughout the PSHE curriculum.

The current guidance, while covering the concept of consent, does so only in broad terms. Discussion of sexual violence is largely limited to that perpetrated by adults against children, with sexual violence perpetrated by children against each other ignored.

Children should be encouraged to see consent as an active rather than a passive state ("Yes means yes" rather than "No means no", colloquially) and to avoid tolerating a disrespect for consent by their peers.

Research supporting this view:

Lisak and Ivan found that sexually aggressive men were considerably more likely to believe the various myths about rape and consent (e.g. that flirting indicates consent to sex). By making sure that these myths are firmly and consistently counter-acted throughout schooling, the number of people believing in them could be reduced, thereby reducing the numbers of rapists and potential rapists in the population.

Weinrott and Saylor found that the vast majority of convicted rapists were serial rapists with an average of around 10 victims. Studies on undetected rapists (e.g. Lisak and Miller or McWhorter et. al.) show a similar pattern, though with a lower average. Many of these rapists had begun their offending during adolescence. It is therefore important to begin education about consent early, before the idea that sexually aggressive behaviour is normal takes hold.

Lisak goes on to say:

the research on undetected rapists tells us that actually a very small percentage of men - serial sexual predators - are responsible for a vastly disproportionate amount of the sexual violence in any community. These men cannot be reached or educated. They must be identified and removed from our communities. Our prevention and education efforts must be focused on the vast majority of men who will never themselves cross the line into criminal behavior, but who by their participation in peer groups and activities either actively or passively provide support or camouflage for the sexual predators in their midst. By laughing at their jokes, by listening uncritically to their stories of “conquests” and “scores,” men become facilitators or passive bystanders of criminal behavior.

Educating children early enough that they do not become serial sexual predators themselves, and have the confidence to avoid creating a supportive environment for those that do, is therefore vital in reducing the current high levels of sexual violence among adolescents and young adults.

Rape prevention: trying hard to avoid giving out useful information

[trigger warning]

So, here's the second reply on rape prevention from the Equalities Office / Home Office.

Thank you for your interest in the Home Office’s work on sexual violence. We are happy to confirm that the Home Office is currently planning a new communications campaign on sexual violence; work on this will begin in November.

I suppose "will begin in November" is more information than I previously had.

The Home Office collaborates with a number of other government departments on the issue of rape and sexual violence. In particular, but not exclusively, we work closely with the Department of Health, the Ministry of Justice, the Crown Prosecution Service, the Department for Education, and the Department for Communities and Local Government.

Home Office officials have regular contact with the academic community on a variety of issues relating to sexual violence policy. These contacts form a useful part of the policy development process. Officials are always happy to take into consideration any useful research and would actively encourage discourse with anyone who has a research interest which is aligned with the policy area.

I had asked what research they were currently using, of course. Such a vague answer - the second time I've got that sort of vague answer to a fairly specific question - suggests that they may not actually be using any.

I might try using FOI requests instead. (I prefer not to, since they're inconvenient to be on the receiving end of, so I try to make informal requests first)

Anyone else know what this campaign in November is going to be about? Other than somehow about rape and other sexual violence?

Rape prevention: response from Education

[trigger warning]

Here's the reply from the Department of Education, which I received yesterday, on rape prevention (with minor edits for readability on the web, that do not affect meaning, and contact details removed)

Thank you for your email dated 4 July 2011 asking for information about the department's role in safeguarding teenagers from abuse. I have been asked to reply.

The Department for Education is committed to making a strong contribution to the cross government Action Plan on Violence Against Women and Girls which is led by the Home Office. This reflects our responsibility for safeguarding young people and our strategic leadership of the education system.

The Department`s actions include:

• Taking forward recommendations from the independent Reg Bailey report on sexualisation and commercialisation of young people.
• Considering the teaching of sexual consent within the Personal Social and Health Education Review. The issue of consent is already covered within the Department's guidance on sex and relationships education (SRE) which can be viewed from our website.
• Anti bullying and behaviour - every school must have measures to encourage good behaviour, respect, and to prevent all forms of bullying amongst pupils. These measures must be part of the school's behaviour policy. Following consultation a final version of guidance for school leaders and governors will be published at the end of July 2011.

They also suggested I contacted the Ministry of Justice, which I'd already done.

The guidance is fairly sparse on consent, as it happens. There's a couple of bullet points on helping people 'avoid being abused' (which is not great wording), half a bullet point on "avoiding [...] exploiting others".

The concept that school children might be committing rape is entirely ignored, though the document does contain a fair amount of information on the possibility of them being victims.

The guidance (2000) predates the repeal of the heterosexist "Section 28" (2000 in Scotland, 2003 elsewhere), so contains the bizarre phrase "There should be no direct promotion of sexual orientation." which I'm fairly sure is universally interpreted as "only directly promote monogamous heterosexuality".

There's also a note about what the National Curriculum contains on the subject, which is mainly about the biology of sexual reproduction, and the enforced requirement to learn some oversimplified rubbish about "sex determination" in humans that very harmfully erases the existence of trans and intersex people (and so makes it harder for people to accept their existence later on). I understand why topics need to be simplified for school, but there's "simplified" and there's "outright wrong".

It'll certainly be better than whatever it replaced - I went through SRE well before this guidance was introduced, and I don't recall consent being mentioned at all. (In fact, they tried very hard to avoid mentioning that sex might involve people¹) - but it definitely needs some significant updating.

Here's the review they mentioned - they opened a consultation on it on the 21 July. I strongly recommend that anyone with an interest in improving teaching about consent replies to the review (which will be open until the end of November 2011) to make their points. If you have relevant evidence and research papers, especially recent ones, make sure that you include them in your response (and share them here, too, if you like, so that other people can use them too).

Many of the questions in the consultation are asking about case studies from schools, but they explicitly say you don't need to answer every question - many of them are more general and can be answered by people other than PSHE teachers.

I'll post my own response to the consultation once I've written it.

Footnote

¹ Not in a pro-masturbation way (that wasn't mentioned at all), in a "this is an abstract rather than physical activity" way.

Rape prevention: Culture, media and sport

[trigger warning]

So, the first department to reply to my messages about rape prevention policy is the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, who sent me a reply on Thursday.

(This was actually quite a surprise - I was expecting them to be overwhelmed with all the messages they were getting recently about News International and so take longer to reply)

As I'm now coming to find is usual for government departments, it doesn't quite answer the question I asked.

Thank you for your recent email about media regulation.

I appreciate your concerns on this matter, but must emphasise that under current broadcasting arrangements, responsibility for what is broadcast on television and radio rests with the broadcasters and the organisations that regulate broadcasting - the Office of Communications (Ofcom), the BBC Trust and the Welsh Fourth Channel Authority (S4C) - within the overall framework set by the Communications Act 2003 and the BBC Charter and Agreement.

It is a long-standing principle that the Government does not interfere in programme matters, either on arrangements for scheduling or on content. It is important to maintain the principle of freedom of expression which political interference could undermine.

Ofcom, the BBC Trust and S4C are independent of the Government and responsible for safeguarding the public interest in broadcasting. They set out the rules and guidance with which broadcasters must comply. Within this framework, it is the broadcasters' job to make judgments about what individual programmes should contain and the time at which they are broadcast.

You may like to raise your concerns by writing to Ofcom at Riverside House, 2a Southwark Bridge Road, London SE1 9HA.

For printed media, the Government is likewise committed to the effective self-regulation of the press, and believes that maintaining the principle of freedom of expression is fundamental to our democracy. Therefore the Government does not - and cannot - interfere in what a newspaper or magazine chooses to publish. With this freedom, however, comes great responsibility. Newspapers must, of course, abide by the law, but they also sign up to a Code of Practice, overseen by the independent Press Complaints Commission (PCC). The Editor's Code of Practice sets a benchmark for the standards the press is expected to maintain. More information on the PCC and the Editors' Code of Practice, including details of how to make a complaint about a particular article, can be found on their website at: www.pcc.org.uk.

Whilst at present we do not believe that there is a convincing case for further Government intervention in media regulation, we recognise that for the public to have confidence in a system of self-regulation it must be effective and robust. We therefore continue to monitor the behaviour of the press and their compliance with the Code.

Let's leave aside the difference from the normal definitions of "effective" and "robust" required to apply them to the PCC's "regulation" of the press.

Anyway, my reply:

Thank you for your reply to my earlier message.

I agree that the responsibility for what is broadcast or reported in the press rests with the broadcasters and the media, and that the government is rightly cautious about taking actions which could limit freedom of expression. I will contact Ofcom as you suggest regarding these matters.

However, there seem to be some areas in which the DCMS could take action without interfering with commercial and individual freedom of expression.

1. The government - along with other public bodies such as police forces and local government - are major advertisers and producers of media content in their own right. Are there any relevant guidelines for this content and advertising to ensure that it fits in with government rape prevention strategies?
2. In its role as a funder (directly or indirectly) of individuals or organisations media and arts projects, the government could encourage the recipients of this funding to avoid inaccurate portrayals of rape and sexual assault, that condone or glamourise the crimes. This would not be a restriction on freedom of expression - people wishing to condone or glamourise rape would have many non-governmental funding sources still willing to fund them - but would ensure that public money is spent in the public interest, rather than counter to it. Are there any policies of this nature within the department, or in its agreements with the bodies the department commissions to indirectly fund cultural activities?

Again, thank you for your time, and for your prompt response to my initial query at what must be a busy time for your department.

I'll write the letter to Ofcom soon. Here's the Broadcasting Code, which is the guidance that would apply.

A few relevant pieces seem to be:

• Section 2 - I am concerned that "violence" and "sexual violence" are listed as separate categories in paragraph 2.3, but only the condoning and glamourising of "violent [...] behaviour" is restricted under paragraph 2.4.
• Section 3 bans material "likely to encourage or incite the commission of crime". Can they be convinced that material supporting rape culture counts? - there's plenty of research to suggest it should.

The rest of it seems less relevant at an initial glance - are there any bits I've missed?

Someone in government must be trying to prevent rape, right?

[trigger warning]

As I mentioned earlier, the letter from the Equalities Office regarding the government's rape prevention strategy had several areas I was going to follow up.

I've now sent messages to the various departments I'd earlier identified as potentially relevant, and I'll post again as and when I get replies.

The full text of the letters is below, for reference (long!)

I've gone for writing the letters with the assumption that there is a cross-departmental rape prevention strategy which covers a wide range of areas, informed by the substantial volume of published research on rapists, and treated as a high priority by ministers.¹

If you think I've missed an area of rape prevention that a department should be responsible for - or an entire department - then please let me know and I'll ask them. If you've asked any government departments about rape prevention yourself, could you let me know which ones, and how useful their answer was?

Home Office / Equalities Office

This is a follow-up to their earlier reply.

Thank you for your recent response to my questions. There are a few questions arising from that for which I would like more information.

• You said that "The Home Office is planning a new campaign which will raise awareness of elements of the Sexual Offences Act". Are more details about this planned campaign currently available?
• You said that the Home Office is the lead department regarding rape prevention. Could you tell me which other departments are currently involved in the government's rape prevention strategy?
• With regard to research into the prevalence and taxonomy of perpetrators of rape, you said that the Home Office currently has no plans to commission research in this area. Could you tell me what pieces of existing research in this area the Home Office is using to inform its rape prevention strategies?

Education

I am following up a conversation with a representative of the Home Office on the topic of the prevention of rape. While the Home Office has lead responsibility for this, there seem to be several areas within your department that would be covered by a governmental rape prevention strategy, and I would like to know more about the specific actions being taken by the Department of Education on this issue.

As you will be aware, numerous surveys have found that teenagers are at high risk of sexual assault and rape perpetrated by other teenagers. Could you please tell me what actions the department has taken to ensure that:

1. All children receive appropriate teaching in consent and related issues (not necessarily solely as relates to sexual activity), to reduce the likelihood that they will commit rape or other sexual offences either as a teenager or as an adult, and to reduce the prevalence of common myths about rape among children and young adults.
2. Teenage perpetrators of sexual offences are dealt with as befits the seriousness of the offence, and the urgent need to prevent reoffending.

In addition, could you tell me what research the department uses to inform its policy regarding the prevention of rape and effective education on consent issues, and if applicable what additional research the department has commissioned or intends to commission.

Culture, Media and Sport

I am following up a conversation with a representative of the Home Office on the topic of the prevention of rape. While the Home Office has lead responsibility for this, there seem to be several areas within your department that would be covered by a governmental rape prevention strategy, and I would like to know more about the specific actions being taken by the Department on this issue.

As Lord McNally stated (Hansard HL Deb, 24 May 2011, c1682)

"I agree with the noble Baroness that it is time to publicise the seriousness of rape, and I think that that could be started in the schools and by looking at some of the worrying things in advertising, in pop music and in some of the newspapers [...] Some of those should look at where they put the position of women in society and whether they encourage young men to give women the respect that they should have."

As the department responsible for many of the areas mentioned in Lord McNally's speech, could you please tell me what steps the department is taking in the following areas:

1. Encouraging private media and creative industries to refrain from producing or distributing creative works which condone, normalise or minimise rape and sexual assault, promote myths about rape, or otherwise work against the government's strategy of rape prevention.
2. Ensuring that publicly-funded media, advertising, and creative works do not condone, normalise or minimise rape and sexual assault, promote myths about rape, or otherwise work against the government's strategy of rape prevention.
3. Encouraging accurate and myth-free reporting of both specific rape and sexual assault trials and the general prevalence of rape and sexual assault, and discouraging the sensationalising of this reporting.

Defence

I am following up a conversation with a representative of the Home Office on the topic of the prevention of rape. While the Home Office has lead responsibility for this, there seem to be several areas within your department that would be covered by a governmental rape prevention strategy, and I would like to know more about the specific actions being taken by the Ministry of Defence on this issue.

Could you please tell me what steps the Ministry is taking in the following areas:

1. Given the widespread use of rape as a weapon of war, what is being done to protect civilian populations in areas in which UK forces are involved?
2. Studies such as McWhorter 2009 [1] show that a significant proportion of military personnel have themselves committed rape. What steps does the MoD take to detect these people to reject them during recruitment and to protect fellow soldiers and civilians from them if they remain undetected at the recruitment stage?

Additionally, could you tell me if the MoD has any plans to commission research similar to McWhorter's, and what existing research in this area it already uses.

[1] Reports of Rape Reperpetration by Newly Enlisted Male Navy Personnel by Stephanie K. McWhorter, et al., published in Violence and Victims, Vol, 24, No. 2, 2009. The study found that around 13% of male new recruits to the US Navy had attempted or committed rape, many on multiple occasions.

Justice

I am following up a conversation with a representative of the Home Office on the topic of the prevention of rape. While the Home Office has lead responsibility for this, there seem to be several areas within your department that would be covered by a governmental rape prevention strategy, and I would like to know more about the specific actions being taken by the Ministry of Justice on this issue.

While, obviously, the Ministry has a major role to play in the conviction, imprisonment and possible rehabilitation of rapists and other sex offenders, to reduce the number of future offences that they commit, I am also interested in what steps the Ministry is taking in the following areas:

1. Ensuring that prisoner education and rehabilitation includes programs intended to reduce sexual offending, including those prisoners who were not arrested for a sexual offence.
2. 2) Preventing rape and sexual assault within the prison environment.
3. 3) Working to rehabilitate those sexual offenders whose detected offences do not merit a custodial sentence so that they do not commit more serious sexual offences later in life.

I would also be interested to know what research on the behaviour and taxonomy of rapists and other serious sexual offenders the Ministry uses to inform its policies in these areas.

Footnotes

¹ Also, a pony.

An ineffectual response for the scale of the problem.

[trigger warning]

Last month I asked the Government Equalities Office what the government was doing to prevent rape.

For reference, I asked them:

• what campaigns to prevent rape and/or to discourage people from choosing to rape has the Equalities Office recently run or have planned?
• what other government departments have or will soon run campaigns with similar aims?
• what recent studies the Equalities Office has commissioned or is aware of concerning the motivations, psychology and methodology of rapists in the UK, and what, if any, future studies you intend to commission?

The relevant(ish) bit of the reply is as follows:

Turning to the issues you have raised in relation to public awareness about the severity of the offence of rape, the Home Office takes the lead within government on communications campaigns on rape and sexual violence. The last campaign was run in 2006 and concentrated on the issue of consent in the context of the Sexual Offences Act (2003), which was introduced in 2004. Further campaigns have been run more recently by individual police forces; a current example of this is the joint Thames Valley Police and Hampshire Constabulary campaign: `Don't Cross the Line' - www.dontcrosstheline.co.uk. The Home Office is planning a new campaign which will raise awareness of elements of the Sexual Offences Act as recommended by Baroness Stern in her recent review of the statutory response to rape in England and Wales.

The Home Office does not currently have any plans to commission any specific research on the taxonomy of perpetrators of rape. However, officials are in regular contact with the academic community and are always prepared to engage in active consultation on issues which relate to sexual violence policy.

Not unsurprisingly, the answer is "very little". I can't help feeling that if most other crimes with a potential life sentence - and a substantial average sentence - were being perpetrated by around 5% of the population, there might be a greater sense of urgency around dealing with them than a few rare awareness campaigns mostly reliant on the initiative of individual police forces¹.

For a rough numeric comparision, using an offence of equivalent sentencing, imagine that the government was aware of a plot by the residents of Wales - yes, all of them - to drop a nuclear bomb on London. An awareness campaign that civilian possession of nuclear weapons is illegal and carries a potential life sentence might be considered to be a little ineffectual as the response.

The question of what recent studies they are aware of regarding perpetrators appears to have been ignored, too. I'm hoping that's just an oversight in replying to my questions, rather than an intentional omission because they aren't aware of any, but on previous form I'm not hopeful.

I'm going to send a few follow-up letters - to the departments named in my previous post to see what they're doing and suggest that they start; to the Home Office to find out more about this planned campaign; and to the Equalities Office to see if they are aware of existing research. As usual, I'll post the letters here after I've sent them.

Footnotes

¹ While some police forces are definitely trying to deal with rapists as effectively as possible, others are ultimately siding with the rapists through inaction. The best-performing forces have a report:conviction ratio over ten times better than the worst-performing forces.

As Baroness Stern said (in far more academic and Parliamentary language than my paraphrase, of course): "If you actually paid any attention to the existing recommendations it would be a big help."