For several decades public disquiet has been intermittently but vehemently expressed about the crime of rape and the way it is handled by the criminal justice system. But in the new millennium the legal process still fails to provide an adequate response to sexual violation and abuse.Rape and the Legal Process examines some of the difficulties which this crime presents and analyses in detail how the legal system could and should be addressing them.

This book is set against the background of the 'justice gap' in sexual assault cases - the dramatic gap between the number of offences recorded by the police and the number of convictions. It seeks to examine the attitudinal problems which bedevil this area of law and possible strategies for addressing them. Written by a professor of law and a professor of psychology, it reviews evidence from socio-legal and social cognition research and presents new data drawn both from interviews with judges and barristers and from studies with prospective lawyers and members of the public. In the final...