Clarke: ‘Serious rape’ gets a longer sentence

Ken Clarke, justice secretary, comments on rape to Radio 5 Live:

“Most people don’t realise you get a discount for pleading guilty. And until you think about it you wonder ‘why do you do that?’ when he’s actually done it. Now rape is actually the strongest example in my opinion of why you do it. Somebody who stops messing about, stops accusing the people accusing him of being liars, stops a great long trial, relieves the victim and the witness of going through the whole ordeal again and being called a liar – that’s why we give a discount. That’s why we have always given a discount. We still have far too many people who don’t plead guilty in the first place. And it, you know, wastes police time, and costs money and all the other things. But the thing that’s most compelling for me is, just, we will give you credit if you put your hands up, stop messing about and don’t make things worse for the victim. And in the case of rape, I can’t think of a better example.

“What I think happens is that the woman finds that another ordeal is now being imposed upon her. The woman’s already distressed and traumatised enough by the rape finds she’s now in a witness box, in front of a jury, the lawyer accusing her of lying, going over the whole thing again.

“Serious rape, I don’t think many judges give five years for a forcible rape, the tariff is longer than that. And a serious rape where, you know, violence and an unwilling woman, the tariff’s much longer than that. Secondly, halfway through they are released but they are released on licence so they’re still supervised. They can be recalled if they do anything wrong on licence – all this ‘they’re let out after half the time’ which is. really right I didn’t introduce that but that’s where we are, but it is subject to licence and subject to recall. So they are the idea is at that stage you’re trying to stop them doing it again and eventually they will finish the sentence and they’re let out.”