A quarter of police forces in England and Wales still do not implement “core policies for investigating sexual crimes”, an official report has found, with women still failing despite promises of change following the murder of Sarah Everard four years ago.
Dame Elish Angiolini’s report follows an investigation set up in March 2021 into the murder of Everard by Wayne Couzens, a serving police officer. She was abducted from a London street while on her way home.
Despite promises of sweeping changes to make women safer while walking on the streets, Angiolini publicly condemned the “paralysis” hindering reform despite sexual crimes against women being “widespread”.
The second part of their report, published on Tuesday, said the recommendations from their last report from a year ago have yet to be implemented.
In the report, Everard’s mother, Suzanne, says she is still in “pain” from the horror of what her daughter suffered at the hands of Couzens.
The report says police and the government do not know the scale of attacks on women by strangers in public places, and that promises made to those in power following the horror of Everard’s murder are not being kept.
In his report Angiolini says: “Twenty-six percent of police forces still do not implement basic policies for investigating sexual crimes, including indecent exposure.”
She attacks the “worrying lack of pace, funding and ambition for prevention work” and says that her first report demanded that sex offenders be banned from policing, which has not yet been met.
The report says the focus needs to be on violent men who attack women, and not just on better street lighting or providing safety advice to women.
Angiolini says there should be better police investigations of attackers, and also better mapping of attacks to learn more about “patterns of behaviour” of male perpetrators.
Their report states that many women do not feel safe walking on Britain’s streets, and condemns the “scattered gun approach” to prevention.
Launching his report, Angiolini said efforts were “fragmented, underfunded and overly reliant on short-term solutions”.
“There is an urgent need to refocus on deterring criminals from committing crimes and preventing criminals from re-offending,” he said.
Police programs like Project Vigilant, which targets predators in clubs and bars, and Operation Soteria, which boosts sexual assault investigations, are praised as signs of hope. Angiolini welcomes the Labor government’s pledge to halve violence against women and girls in a decade.
But she says the Labor government has yet to develop a strategy to deliver on promises, more than a year after coming to power. “Somehow we have come to accept that many women do not feel safe walking on our streets,” the report said.
In the report Everard’s mother tells of her continued grief: “I went through a turmoil of emotions: sadness, anger, panic, guilt and numbness. They all came on a single day, but as time went on they became more widely spaced.
“When I think about her, I can’t get over the fear of her last hours. I still get upset thinking about what she endured.”
The report praises “excellent” work and initiatives to promote the safety of women following Everard’s murder, but calls for a “laser” focus on predatory men and says prevention work to stop them before they attack is “underfunded and low-prioritised”.
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For example, in 2023 the previous Conservative government said violence against women was a priority but was underfunded. She quotes a witness who described containment efforts as “a bit like a puffball”, “looking huge, but there’s nothing there”.
Angiolini said that despite promises, violence against women is not being taken as seriously as counter-terrorism. “Too often, prevention remains just a word in this area,” she said. “Until this disparity is addressed, violence against women and girls cannot credibly be described as a national priority.”
Angiolini is a former top law officer in Scotland and the tone of the report is one of barely controlled anger from a pillar of power structures in other parts of the country that, despite all the promises, is not doing enough to protect women.
The report says: “The inquiry recognizes that efforts to achieve long-term change are best met with a series of uncoordinated, short-term measures driven by goodwill as opposed to proper funding. This will not work. Women will continue to be harmed.”
In this part of the report she makes a total of 13 new recommendations.
The following year, another of his reports would look at police culture, and then Angiolini would produce a report on David Carrick, who led a campaign of terror against women while a Met officer. Part one, published last February, found that Couzens should never have become a police officer.
Andrea Simon, director of the End Violence Against Women Coalition, said: “It is deeply worrying that, almost two years on, policing has still not implemented basic reforms such as a ban on officers with sexual offense histories… Women cannot be expected to trust a system that resists misogyny and racism in its name, and consistently fails to make changes.”
Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, said: “This Government will halve violence against women and girls within a decade, and our upcoming strategy to tackle violence against women and girls will set out how we achieve this.”
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Helen Millichap, director of the National Center for Violence Against Women and Public Safety, said: “Police are determined to respond collectively to the harm caused to women and girls and to work in partnership with all the agencies outlined in this report. We will now consider the findings and recommendations carefully and in detail, recognizing that urgent action is needed.”
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