The Angiolini Inquiry, commissioned in the wake of the murder of Sarah Everard, yesterday released its second report. It highlighted massive and continuing failures within the police force regarding violence against women and girls (VAWG). This included the fact that a quarter of forces lack even basic policies on sexual offences among their officers.
Inquiry examines murder of Sarah Everard
In March 2021, police officer Wayne Couzens kidnapped, raped, and murdered Sarah Everard. He identified himself as an officer and used handcuffs to conduct the false arrest of Everard in order to carry out his attack.
Couzens had spent nearly 20 years as a police officer. That’s in spite of the fact that he’d indecently exposed himself twice, mere months before the attack. Part 1 of the Angiolini report dealt with how exactly Couzens was permitted to remain a police officer for so long.
The report’s chair, Lady Elish Angiolini KC, called for a “fundamental shift” in the prevention efforts for sexually motivated crimes against women. Rather than measures like telling women how to protect themselves, she wants to shift the focus onto identifying and targeting predatory men.
Likewise, she also voiced concern at “key gaps in knowledge” regarding VAWG. This included a lack of data on sexual assault and indecent exposure. In turn, this made it difficult to answer even basic questions, such as:
How many women reported being raped by strangers in public spaces in England and Wales last year?
The Report also highlighted what it called a “troubling lack of momentum, funding and ambition” for VAWG prevention work:
as well as a lack of progress on previously accepted recommendations from Lady Elish’s Part 1 Report. Although Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) was categorised as a ‘national threat’ in 2023 (requiring police forces to coordinate their response and resources to tackle such crimes in line with other national threats), 26% of police forces have yet to implement basic policies for investigating sexual offences, including indecent exposure.
Likewise, the Part 1 also recommended people with cautions/convictions for sexual offences should be able to become or remain police officers. However, even this absolutely base-level necessity hasn’t yet been implemented.
All of these things are well and good. We know that there is too much focus on telling women how to defend themselves, and too little focus on the offenders carrying out sexual assaults. We know that the police are fundamentally opposed to reform. So what should we do about it?
The police will save us
Unfortunately, this is where the report loses us. Angiolini stated:
My Reports sets out how sexually-motivated crimes against women remain widespread across public spaces in England and Wales, yet efforts to prevent them are fragmented, underfunded and overly reliant on short-term solutions. While measures such as improved lighting and safety advice are valuable, there is an urgent need to refocus on preventing predators from offending and stopping perpetrators from reoffending. The Government and police should demonstrate their commitment to women’s safety by fully supporting and funding the roll out of Project Vigilant and Operation Soteria, programmes specifically aimed at tackling these issues.
The report strongly recommended “immediate focus on and sustainable funding” for Projects Vigilant and Soteria. So, what are they exactly? Well, they’re policing programmes aimed at, respectively, stopping predators offending, and offenders reoffending.
So, having established that the forces have kicked their heels implementing even basic safeguards, up to and including ‘don’t give sexual offenders a fucking badge’, the solution that Angiolini recommends is a pair of police taskforces. Worse still, it involves ploughing more money into policing.
Last month, the Metropolitan Police published an internal review which found that the culture of the Met police makes racism “inevitable”. The report used internal documents and evidence to draw the conclusion that the Met’s leadership and culture work actively to prevent reform within the organisation.
Racism and misogyny shouldn’t be conflated here. However, last month’s report illustrates the ways in which the police can work directly counter to efforts at reform, both within and without their organisation. The solution to VAWG cannot, and must not, be built around the expectation that the police can resolve this issue.
Time and again, we have seen that the police are part of the problem.
Featured image via the Canary
This post was originally published on Canary.