Inquiry looks at male bias in criminal justice system

An independent commission headed by a Labour MP will investigate how women are being failed by the criminal justice system.

The year-long inquiry will examine poor prosecution rates in rape and domestic violence cases, as well as the treatment of women in prison.

It will also look at the experience of women victims and survivors of crime, women's fear of crime and their attitudes to the criminal justice system, including the degree of faith that they place in it.

Vera Baird QC, MP for Redcar, will chair the commission, which is being jointly launched on Monday by the Society of Labour Lawyers and the Fawcett Society, a women's issues group. It is being supported by the Association of Women Barristers.

Ms Baird said: "Criminal justice is mostly about men. Ninety per cent or more of defendants are men and many of the procedures and the rules of law and evidence are geared to way men respond and to male situations.

"Women's prisons are a hangover from the men's system and are still run as an afterthought when they should be dealing with very different needs."

Geethika Jayatilaka, head of policy and parliamentary affairs at the Fawcett Society, said: "Criminal justice policy is a particularly male- dominated area since proportionately few women face criminal charges, and there are relatively few women working at a senior level within the criminal justice system. Hence, policy considerations, sentencing provision and even defences tend to work on a male model."

The commission will work closely with the Home Office, which set up a special interest group looking at women in the criminal justice system under the guidance of the former home office minister Charles Clarke.

Its main role was to ensure Labour's proposals for criminal justice reform did not inadvertently discriminate against women.

In April a study found that only 7.35 per cent of women – about one in 13 – reporting a rape see their alleged assailant convicted. The findings confirm Home Office statistics showing that the rate of conviction for rape has fallen from 33 per cent of reported cases in 1977 to 7.5 per cent in 1999.

The report, produced jointly by the inspectorates for the police and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), indentified failures throughout the system and recommended a package of measures to help bring more rapists to justice.

In a separate study, the CPS found that slightly more than half of its domestic violence cases ended in a conviction. Fourteen per cent resulted in a defendant being bound over to keep the peace, while 35 per cent were dropped by the CPS before trial.