Violence against women and girls should get swift justice too, says ex-victims commissioner

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The former victims commissioner has called for rape and sexual assault cases to experience the same swift treatment seen over the riots.

Dame Vera Baird called for a trial period in which the crimes were fast-tracked through the justice system, saying the move could have a “significant deterrent impact”.

As violence raged across the country, Sir Keir Starmer warned rioters they faced rapid and “substantive” sentences.

Since then nearly 500 people have been arrested and almost 150 charged. At the weekend the justice secretary also confirmed that 500 prison places had been found to deal with those going through the courts.

But the ability of the justice system to clamp down on the violence has now led to questions why it cannot do the same for other crimes.

Asked if she backed putting violence against women and girls on the same footing – by handing out speedy sentences, Dame Vera said “Yes”.

She told Times Radio: “We all know that the last government left the criminal justice system in a total mess. Low prosecutions for sexual assaults, waits of two to three years whilst victims are ... hanging in a hinterland where they can’t leave something behind and get on with their lives ... All of that is a huge deterrent and that needs speeding up and improving radically.”

She added: “The judges did make an attempt about six months ago to put trials for rape that had long delays right at the front [of the queue]. I don’t know if they succeeded in that, but that is a good endeavour. Some probably limited, but nonetheless powerful, experiment with putting rape and sexual assault cases right at the top of the list and doing them quickly might have some significant deterrent impact.”

She was speaking after new figures showed incidents of sexual harassment against women on British railways have more than doubled since 2021.

The number of crimes against women and girls rose from 7,561 in 2021 to 11,357 in 2023, figures from the British Transport Police Authority’s 2024 annual report show.

The former attorney general during the 2011 riots recently warned the far-right violence should be a wake-up call for the country’s broken justice system.

Dominic Grieve praised the rapid convictions of those who took part in the violence, saying they had used similar tactics in 2011 and that the authorities in recent days had “risen to the occasion”.

But, he told The Independent, high-profile arrests and sentences will not necessarily prevent future violence on the streets unless extensive court delays caused by years of underfunding are dealt with.

The number of crown court cases waiting more than two years to be resolved has soared tenfold in just four years, new analysis of the latest official data by this newspaper has found, from 555 in December 2019 to 6,523 in the same month last year.

The length of time it took between a crime being committed and the case concluding in the crown courts grew from an average of 486 days at the end of 2019 to 683 days over the same period last year, just down from a peak of 703 days six months earlier.