Understanding Sex Offence Victims, Risk and Police Investigations: Metadata, 2021-2023

As part of Operation Soteria, which aimed to transform the way rape and serious sexual assault are investigated, comprehensive and novel datasets were created. This included over 80 interviews with police officers and Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) staff in five UK police forces/CPS areas; a quantitative dataset of all sex offence reports over a three-year period in three UK police forces and associated criminal histories of all named suspects (totalling information about 163,000 offences and 28,000 named suspects), and 177 case reviews from five forces including detailed information and analysis of rape investigations in different contexts. This project allowed us to explore these datasets further to develop our understanding of sexual violence and law enforcement responses to sex offending. Specifically, the aim of the research was to explore victim experiences, patterns of suspect recidivism and institutional challenges. Topics covered included child sexual abuse, male victimisation, vulnerable victims, false allegations, secondary victimisation, suspect typologies, predicting recidivism and crossover offending.

The Data Collection only consists of metadata as the data could not be archived due to legal, ethical or commercial constraints. Similarly, documentation such as the interview schedules cannot be provided because the intellectual property belongs not to the researchers but elsewhere.