New reports published by Scottish Sentencing Council regarding rape and sexual assault offences, with input from Strathclyde academics

The Scottish Sentencing Council has published two reports on rape and sexual offences involving assault written by academics from the Universities of Glasgow and Strathclyde, including our Dr Jay Gormley and Professor Cyrus Tata from the Strathclyde Centre for Law, Crime and Justice.

In a related blog post, the authors of these reports highlight that the law surrounding rape and sexual offences was reformed in Scotland by the introduction of the Sexual Offences (Scotland) Act 2009 and note that, in recent years, much academic and policy work has radically re-considered sexual offences. That work has analysed matters including how definitions offered by the Act operate in practice, the low conviction and high attrition rates associated with these types of offences, and ongoing difficulties associated with the use of sexual history evidence in criminal trial. This new work looks at aspects that have been comparatively under-analysed, in relation to sentencing practices of sexual offences in Scotland. These new reports focus on issues pertaining to the sentencing of: (i) cases involving rape and (ii) cases involving sexual assault.

You can read the blog post (which includes links to the two reports) online at https://www.scottishsentencingcouncil.org.uk/news-and-media/news/reports-on-sentencing-for-rape-and-sexual-assault-offences/.

Further information about our Centre for Law, Crime and Justice can be found here.