NCJ Number
138217
Date Published
1988
Length
174 pages
Annotation
Data were gathered from police files, sexual assault center files, court monitoring, and interviews with key informants (police, prosecutors, defense lawyers, judges, sexual assault center workers, physicians, and victims) to evaluate the impact of Canada's Bill C-127, "An Act to Amend the `Criminal Code' in Relation to Sexual Offences and Other Offences Against the Person" in Vancouver, Lethbridge, Winnipeg, Hamilton, Montreal, and Fredericton.
Abstract
Both the interviews and court monitoring data provide evidence that Bill C-127 has had a positive impact on the processing of sexual assaults. In both the 2 years prior to the 1983 amendments and the 2 years subsequent (1984-1985), most complainants reporting offenses to the police were female, and almost all accused were male. The 12.7-percent conviction rate found in the prereform Winnipeg sample is atypical and inconsistent with that found in other studies. Police and crown attorneys appear to be responding to considerable public pressure to take sexual assault cases seriously, and many judges also are becoming more sensitive to victims. 23 footnotes, 10 figures, 68 tables, and 64 references