Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill — Clause 7 — Duties to collaborate and plan to prevent and reduce serious violence — 28 Feb 2022 at 19:45

“We recognise that many people may disagree with our conclusion and find it difficult to understand given the prevalence of sex and gender-based violence and abuse…our recommendations have been decided…on the strength of the evidence and policy considerations before us.”

“We recommend that sex or gender should not be added as a protected characteristic for the purposes of aggravated offences and enhanced sentencing.”

“Rape prosecutions are already at an all-time low, and we believe adding sex/gender as a protected characteristic would further complicate the judicial process and make it even harder to secure convictions.”?

“obtain, record and publish all reasonably available data,”

“prove more harmful than helpful, both to victims of violence against women and girls, and also to efforts to tackle hate crime more broadly”-

“It might be practically difficult to prove a sex or gender-based aggravation in the context of VAWG crimes that usually take place in private”.

“We are particularly concerned about the potential for this to make some sexual offence prosecutions more difficult”.

“the motivation of hostility is much more likely to apply to stranger perpetrators, and here we see the hate crime framework as propping up harmful myths about violence against women.”

Debate in Parliament |