The typical delay between an offence of rape and the completion of the resulting criminal case rose to 1,000 days in 2021 for the first time, figures have revealed.
The Ministry of Justice said the median time between offence and completion in rape cases was 1,020 days, or over two and a half years, in the first nine months of 2021, up by more than a quarter from the previous year.
The data, published in response to parliamentary questions from the shadow attorney general, Emily Thornberry, also showed that 576 rape cases had been waiting for more than a year to come to court as of the end of September 2021, well over double the average of the previous five years.
It come just days after Home Office data revealed sharp drops in prosecution and conviction rates for rape, with only 1.3% of cases now being prosecuted.
Thornberry said the delays were “sickening and unacceptable”. “These figures show that waits of more than 1,000 days have become the norm for survivors of rape. Every day of delay puts trials at risk, threatening to rob survivors of the justice they deserve, and prolonging the trauma they are made to endure,” she said.
“Any government with an ounce of compassion would set about fixing these record delays as a priority, not letting them grow worse by the year.”
Extreme delays in a number of rape cases made the overall average delay even longer, with the mean time between offence and completion standing at 2,767 days in the first nine months of 2021 – more than seven and a half years – close to the record of 2,910 reached in 2019.
Jo Sidhu QC, chair of the Criminal Bar Association, said: “Five years or more for a complainant to finally see a trial conclude is rapidly becoming the norm not the exception as these serious cases go to the back of a queue in a system starved of criminal barristers.
“The painful irony for rape victims is last year half the number of rape complaints were prosecuted than seven years ago, but they took on average twice as long to conclude.”
Criminal Bar Association analysis showed there were over 6,400 outstanding sexual offence trials as of 30 September 2021, a 125% rise in three years.
“Rape trials are only going to get longer unless government puts the resources in place to ensure we have enough prosecutors and defenders to tackle the backlogs,” Sidhu said.
In October, Boris Johnson said there were “delays taking place at every stage in the process” in cases such as rape and domestic violence, and cited complexities in gathering evidence as one of the reasons. Admitting that rape victims in Britain were being badly served, he promised to “stop at nothing to make sure we get more rapists behind bars”.
Labour has said it would end delays by increasing the number of rape and serious sexual assault offence (Rasso) units in the Crown Prosecution Service and rolling out new Nightingale courts to guarantee an additional 33,000 sitting days.
A government spokesperson said: “We are overhauling our entire response to rape and boosting funding for support services to £185m. We are also recruiting 20,000 police officers, introducing new justice scorecards and increasing court capacity so victims get the justice they deserve quicker.”