Observing Court Responses to Victims of Rape and Sexual Assault

What is it about?

The Criminal Justice System (CJS) in England and Wales is persistently critiqued for poor responses to rape and, despite years of policy reform, courts resist change (Brown, Hovarth, Kelly and Westmarland, 2010). Even with a plethora of good quality research on these issues, several gaps in the literature remain. For example, most studies use interviews with victims or legal personnel; but court observations, which explore actions rather than stated attitudes, are rare. In addition, the focus tends to be on identifying problematic practices rather than their underlying causes; the research that does attempt to do this is now outdated by important policy changes (see Ellison, 2001). This study therefore uses observations to explore judges and barristers treatment of rape, seeking to understand such treatment in relation to the underlying context of the English and Welsh CJS

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