Nick Ferrari pointed out a serious problem with the government’s new approach to crime during a particularly sticky interview with the policing minister on Monday.
As Chris Philp was promoting the Tories’ crackdown on anti-social behaviour and recruitment of 20,000 new officers, Ferrari used the LBC interview to turn the tables and highlight a major flaw in this new action plan.
The morning show host began: “So it would be appear that we’re going to be tough who daub graffiti or smash bus shelters, but meanwhile I read that at least 1,000 sex offenders have avoided criminal records over the last two years by apologising to their victims.”
Ferrari pointed out that these are called community resolutions – and there were 1,624 cases like this in 2021 and 2022.
He noted: “So under your government, you’re going to get very tough on graffiti but not on child rape.
“How do you explain that?”
Philp quickly hit back: “I don’t accept the characterisation of our approach to sexual offences.”
He also claimed that reports of these community resolutions note that this tends to happen with either the victims’ request or consent.
The minister continued: “We do take these offences extremely seriously, we’ve recently changed the law to make sure that rapists spent longer in prison – something Labour extraordinarily voted against – we are running a particular project called Operation Soteria, designed to increase rape conviction rate, which have in the past been too low, which are now thankfully increasing.
“The average sentence for rape in this country has gone up, roughly speaking, from eight years to ten years.”
Ferrari said all of Philp’s claims seems to be “contrary” to the Baroness Casey’s report.
This was a review into England’s largest police force, the Metropolitan Police, which began after the kidnap, rape and murder of Sarah Everard at the hands of a then-serving Met officer.
Released last week, it found that the entire force needed immediate reform, or to be broken up, because it is institutionally racist, misogynistic and homophobic.
In the report, it was revealed that fridges containing essential evidence of rape were broken, making it impossible for the cases to go ahead.
And as Ferrari recalled live on air on Monday, one Met officer told Casey’s team: “Rape detection rates are so low you may as well say it’s legal in London.”
In response, Philp admitted: “Rape conviction rates have been too low, that is the blunt truth.”
But, he claimed that rape conviction rates were on track to double – and as of September 2022 they had “gone up by about 50%”.