Sussex Police has joined a national project to make rape and sexual offences more victim-focused.
Operation Soteria is intended to transform the way that the police handle rape and other serious sexual offences, with training to ensure officers are “victim-centred”.
The force was working to improve its approach, Acting Chief Constable Dave McLaren told Sussex police and crime commissioner Katy Bourne at a performance and accountability meeting today (Friday 13 September).
Mrs Bourne said that since she first took office in 2012, the rate of rapes and sexual offences across the county had risen from two to three a day to five or six.
She asked how Sussex was dealing with the shortage of detectives that was highlighted in a national report, published last month, on investigations of rape and sexual offences.
The acting chief constable said that Sussex, like other forces, was affected by the national shortage of detectives available to investigate rape and sexual offences.
To tackle the problem, Sussex had created dedicated teams to take pressure off investigators.
The acting chief constable said that more people were reporting sexual offences and, as it was becoming easier to report, more victims were coming forward.
Sussex Police had 180 full-time detectives in its public protection teams but was also using other officers and civilian staff to deal with rape and sexual offences.
A wider team was supporting detectives, including victim co-ordinators, specialist case workers and support officers who compiled reports to the Crown Prosecution Service.
Across the county, 83 per cent of reports of rape were alleged to have happened in private locations and 9 per cent in public at night.
He said that incidents in public were often linked with the night-time economy in places such as Brighton, usually involving people who knew each other or had met on a night out, rather than complete strangers.
In Brighton, he said, night marshals had helped make public places safer.
Mrs Bourne asked what Sussex Police was doing to ensure its response was “victim-centred”.
The acting chief constable said that the force was more “suspect-focused” to try to make the process as “pain-free as possible” for victims, such as returning their mobile phones within 24 hours. And specialist officers supported people from minority communities.
Mrs Bourne said that communication appeared to be improving and she asked how long people were waiting for support in Sussex.
The acting chief constable said: “A lot of the crimes and victims we deal with have complex needs and complex backgrounds which stretches the time it takes to find the right resource and specialist skills to support them.
“With a lot of our cases, when sexual offences are reported to us we get a specialist officer there as quick as we can.
“A lot of the time we do that with a victim-centred response. We treat is as an emergency. If it’s a historical crime, we arrange to see the victim when it suits them.”
