KEY POINTS:
London police have become much kinder to women who complain of sex crimes but they still seldom get their man. According to the Metropolitan Police's own latest research, they often fail to even investigate him.
Many of the men reported to police for rape were not investigated and
the allegations were not recorded despite the men having histories of violence, the research found.
If the complainant had been drinking or was under 18, it was rare for the complaint to be investigated or the accused interviewed, or for the allegation to appear on the police's books.
Discouraging as that seems, the Metropolitan Police are, however, doing such research and allowing the findings to become public.
Inadequate investigation of complaints of sex crimes is "a problem all around the world", says Professor Betsy Stanko.
So is a reluctance on the part of police services to turn the spotlight on themselves.
The Met and Stanko are exceptions. The former criminology professor was recruited in 2003 when the London police service decided that in-depth research done by specialists was vital to improving performance.
She heads a group of nine non-sworn researchers the Met's strategic research unit. Though the department is small, it represents a bold and important leap, Stanko says.
"It's very unusual to have expertise from the outside inside ... it's a continuous negotiation around the nervousness about transparency."
Though research is part of some police roles here, New Zealand police has nothing like Stanko's unit, which has analysed the Met's performance in dealing with hate crime, neighbourhood crime and sex crime.
Victoria University criminologist Jan Jordan laments the dearth of research in New Zealand. "I was at a conference recently and they didn't even know the attrition rate [the rate of complaints not recorded as crimes, not detected or not pursued by the victim]."
Jordan says if the police are serious about improving their service to victims of crime they need to find independent ways of gaining feedback. "This doesn't mean sending out an evaluation form, it means funding independent research."
Spokesman Jon Neilson confirmed police kept data only related to cases where charges were laid. There were no fulltime in-house researchers but police occasionally commissioned outside research.
An information vacuum may make it harder for New Zealand police to raise performance and gain genuine public confidence following Dame Margaret Bazley's damning commission of inquiry into (mostly historical) police misconduct. In releasing her report, Bazley effectively said the police couldn't be relied upon to make the necessary improvements and recommended the States Services Commission and Auditor-General act as watchdogs to check progress on the implementation of her 60 recommendations.
Stanko, who visited New Zealand last year to speak at the Police College, says police need help to make significant change.
"I'm not doubting the police's sincerity that's one of the reasons I work for the Metropolitan Police but you are talking about cultural change and that's very difficult to achieve unless you actually see the outcome of what you are doing .
"I can believe I'm quite frugal, for example, but if I actually look at my accounts I can see that I'm not.
"It's the difference between belief and evidence and the police is an evidence-based organisation. My job is helping them use their own evidence to drive improvement. They need help. I don't believe any organisation can do it on their own. It's got to be open and transparent and that willingness is a huge gulf for policing to cross because they are not used to being so transparent."
She understood from her trip here that New Zealand police were having discussions around citizen satisfaction, "so my sense is there are some developments there".
The revelations this month emerged from the second part of her team's review into the handling of rape complaints. Researchers had reviewed the files of 677 rapes reported in London during two months in 2005 and in the second part followed up by tracing the suspects.
A third of the reported rapes were not investigated or recorded as crimes because they were not thought to involve an offence. But the researchers discovered many of the suspects named by the complainants had a history of sex offences against women.
A third of suspects whose victims were under 18 were not investigated but had histories of violent offending.
Stanko: "One of the things we found is that although you may change the way in which you approach the treatment of victims, the whole way we investigate needs to be changed."
They spent a lot of time looking at the credibility of the women but forgot to scutinise the guys, she says.
One explanation was because cases that got to court often came down to the complainant's word against the defendant's regarding consent; and alcohol and youth were factors that could lessen the complainant's credibility.
But the researchers found that 87 per cent of rape reports were made by women whose characteristics youth, alcohol, drugs, mental illness made them vulnerable to rape but also to courtroom challenges of their credibility. The result was a preoccupation by police with the virtues or vulnerabilities of the victims rather than the propensities of the perpetrator.
"I've been advocating they do a full investigation anyway and its quite possible, even if corroborative evidence isn't found, it will give more of a [protective] buffer to the victim," says Stanko.
Rape had always been viewed as easily claimed but hard to prove "but actually it's not easy to complain either". But, says Stanko, there is evidence that more woman in London are feeling confident enough to make complaints.
She came across cases where woman who believed they had been raped but were too drunk to recall exactly what happened, still went to the police.
"I couldn't imagine [them making a complaint] 25 years ago."
Improvement is slow, but the more transparent police work and the outcomes of complaints are, the more police are focused on continuous improvement, says Stanko. "You never say 'we're doing better', without also saying 'and we are able to open our books to you and show you how'."
American-born but resident in Britain for 25 years, Stanko says she's been welcomed by her police colleagues despite her role of searching for flaws and remedies. "I've been adopted; they call me the professor."
Keeping the numbers up
A persistent problem for police is recruitment and in New Zealand this is excerbated by the need to attract quality recruits to replace senior officers who leave in their mid-50s to maximise superannuation.
Rex Miller, a detective chief inspector when he reached the compulsory retirement age of 55 in 2000, says operational experience is being lost among the police's top ranks. Compulsory retirement at 55 has been scrapped but the superannuation scheme to which many long-serving officers belong acts as a financial inducement to retire early.
That scheme has been superseded by one which doesn't disadvantage those who stay on, but the police are likely to continue to prematurely lose many experienced officers on the old scheme.
Dave Henwood, the criminal profiler who arrested serial rapist Joe Thompson, was a recent highly-skilled officer who retired early due to the financial inducement of the old scheme.
Counties-Manukau CIB head Steve Rutherford said some regions, such as Canterbury, had waiting lists while others struggled to attract sufficient staff. He rated the situation in South Auckland now as "reasonably good".
Rutherford was involved in Operation Step-Up, a campaign launched two years ago to recruit new police specifically for his region. Seminars attracted 850 people from which he estimated 35 had been accepted.
In an effort to widen the net, physical fitness standards have been eased for older recruits.
A source said though the standard of the bulk of recruits was reasonable, there was a small percentage where "you wonder how they got in with their [poor] academic ability".
Another source was concerned at what he saw as a lack of discretion. He cited the example of a successful and innovative primary school principal who was considered to have all the attributes of a good police officer but was rejected because of a 15-year-old drink-driving conviction.
In a case that made the news in 2005, a police trainee now faces trial for rape after a routine fingerprinting exercise at Police College resulted in his prints allegedly matching those from the crime scene.
"There are people getting in who shouldn't be in and people who haven't who should have," the source said.
Recruits who arrive at the police college are as good as in the past, says police recruitment manager Inspector Dawn Bell. "There's a very robust screening process to ensure the ones who aren't as good don't get through to police college."
Recruits undergo a battery of tests to assess reasoning, numeracy and verbal ability. These are scored one to 10; a minimum score of four is required. Recruits who might have failed a test but are considered suitable can take the test again.
Bell said the tight labour market was the main difficulty recruiters faced.
