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Rape, Defendant Anonymity and Evidence‐Based Policy Making
Author(s) -
Rumney Philip N.S.,
Fenton Rachel Anne
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
the modern law review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.37
H-Index - 22
eISSN - 1468-2230
pISSN - 0026-7961
DOI - 10.1111/1468-2230.12004
Subject(s) - anonymity , newspaper , economic justice , political science , government (linguistics) , law , criminology , sociology , philosophy , linguistics
In 2010, the Coalition government announced in its Programme for Government , that: ‘We will extend anonymity in rape cases to defendants.’ The question of anonymity for defendants accused of rape and other sexual offences, has been repeatedly raised in parliamentary debates over several decades, and has also received frequent attention in newspapers and, to a lesser extent, in academic and professional literature. The debate includes an array of factual claims and arguments that rest on weak empirical foundations. In N ovember 2010, the Ministry of Justice published a report entitled: Providing Anonymity to those Accused of Rape: An Assessment of Evidence , which was intended to provide an evaluation of evidence that would inform the debate over defendant anonymity. This article critically examines this report and its discussion of key issues such as false rape allegations, and considers whether its conclusions can be relied upon by policy makers.