Every police pressure to get rape probe groups as a part of Shabana Mahmood’s blitz on intercourse crimes in ‘largest crackdown on violence in opposition to girls and women in British historical past’
Rapists will have ‘nowhere to hide’ under plans being revealed this week by Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood.
Specialist rape and sex offences investigation teams will be set up in every police force in what the Government calls ‘the largest crackdown on violence against women and girls in British history’.
The blitz will include Ms Mahmood’s reforms to human rights laws to enable her to deport foreign sex offenders more quickly and try to stem violent sex offences committed by illegal immigrants.
Labour aims to restrict asylum seekers’ ability to use laws such as ‘rights to family life’ under European Court of Human Rights rulings.
Other measures will include protections for victims of domestic abuse including exclusion zones, curfews and more electronic tagging.
Offenders will face strict punishments for breaches, with a five-year jail sentence for not following the rules.
A team of covert online investigators will target on-screen abusers – building on undercover work that has led to the arrest of 1,700 child sex abuse offenders.
The specialist rape and sex offences investigators will be expected to ‘relentlessly pursue’ criminals.
Rapists will have ‘nowhere to hide’ under plans being revealed this week by Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood
Only about half of police forces currently have specialist rape investigators. The remaining forces will be expected to put them in place by 2029. Ms Mahmood claims the plans in the Government’s Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy will halve sexual attacks by the end of the decade.
She says they will replace an ‘outdated system’ where officers have been unable to thoroughly investigate, charge and lock up rapists.
She adds the extra officers will be paid for from existing police budgets following a £1billion increase in police funding.
Declaring violence against women and girls a ‘national emergency’, Ms Mahmood says: ‘For too long, these crimes have been considered a fact of life.
‘That’s not good enough. We will halve this in a decade.
‘We are announcing a range of measures to bear down on abusers, stopping them in their tracks. Rapists, sex offenders and abusers will have nowhere to hide.’
It comes amid a rise in violent and sexual offences committed by people who have crossed the Channel in small boats. Last week two Afghan migrants were convicted of raping a 15-year-old girl in an attack in Royal Leamington Spa, Warwickshire. And an Iraqi ‘predator’ who arrived on a dinghy in the Channel has also been jailed for eight months for a sex attack on a woman travelling on a train in Crawley, West Sussex.
Ms Mahmood adds: ‘The human rights of foreign sex offenders have been prioritised over the safety of British women and girls.
‘I share the public’s fury at such outrageous abuses of our legal system and will bring this circus to an end.
‘We will introduce laws to make this country and its citizens safer, ensuring perpetrators of sexual violence are swiftly removed from our soil.’
But Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said: ‘Labour shrinks from uncomfortable truths – voting against tougher sentences and presiding over falling sex offender convictions. At every turn, Labour has failed women.’
