LOSING GROUND? Making sense of attrition in rape cases

Lillian Artz,Dee Smythe

doi:10.17159/2413-3108/2007/v0i22a962

Abstract

South Africa is notorious for being the ‘rape capital of the world.’ The new Sexual Offences Bill introduces a number of legal reforms intended to improve the handling of sexual offences cases. But these new reform efforts will not have the desired impact if laws are not properly implemented or interpreted. It is argued that we need to pay urgent attention to the unacceptable high number of cases that drop out of the system, and ensure that victims are given the tools and support to participate effectively in the legal process.

Highlights

The levels of rape and other forms of sexual assault in South Africa have been the subject of international attention and condemnation over the past ten years
The repeatedly cited dictum that refers to South Africa as the ‘rape capital of the world’ is often accompanied by the presentation of South Africa’s rape statistics, which fluctuate between 52 500 and 54 000 per year
Accepting that levels of rape ‘are high’, and are arguably an important measure of women’s safety and equality, the focus on reported rape statistics and convictions has the potential to detract policymakers from the more substantive issues surrounding the treatment of rape victims within the criminal justice and public health care systems

Summary

Making sense of attrition in rape cases

South Africa is notorious for being the ‘rape capital of the world.’ The new Sexual Offences Bill introduces a number of legal reforms intended to improve the handling of sexual offences cases. There is no clear indicator – across all offence types and in relation to sexual offences – of what constitutes a ‘good conviction rate’ Both criminal justice reports and more scholarly research on attrition and conviction rates have sidestepped the setting of concrete thresholds for what constitutes effective prosecution and ‘good’ conviction rates, despite using them as performance indicators. Successful prosecution is based on conviction rates, to the exclusion of other indicators that may signal successful prosecuting practice In rape cases, this may include key performance indicators that may not be quantifiable, but reflect the more qualitative aspects of investigations and prosecutions as well as the experiences of victims throughout the investigation and trial processes. See the box below for more detail on these processes

Ways in which rape cases can be disposed of

Finalised in regional court

Findings

Conclusion