January 14, 2008
Police to use text message tactics to snare rape suspects
Police and prosecutors in rape cases are set to experiment with controversial techniques designed to make suspects incriminate themselves through phone calls or text messages. The Guardian reports.
"The tactic, used by investigators in the United States, involves women sending texts or making calls to their alleged attackers to see if they can extract an admission of guilt.
Lawyers and detectives believe the approach could be vital in helping to boost the stubbornly low rape conviction rate in England and Wales, where barely 6% of cases reported to police end in conviction.
"Police get the victim to send a text saying something like 'how could you do that to me?'" said a senior CPS source. "They sometimes get a text back saying 'I'm really sorry, I know I was out of order, it won't happen again' or something like that."
The so-called "pretext" phone call, which is lawful in some US states but not in others, is considered one of the strongest tools in the armoury of the rape investigator. It is widely used in the typical rape case where juries are reluctant to convict, those in which the man and woman know each other and the evidence comes down to his word against hers."
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