Transparency data

Statistics on timeliness, victim withdrawal rates and conviction rates in adult-rape-flagged cases in the Service Justice System

Published 14 January 2026

This is part of the Ministry of Defence (MOD) commitment to support understanding and prevent misinterpretation by proactively taking an open, clear and accessible approach to the use of data, statistics and wider analysis in the public domain. It is part of our commitment to comply with the Standards for the Public Use of Statistics, Data and Wider Analysis. This is a one-off exercise not being released under Official Statistic standards due to not sufficiently meeting the standards required of the ‘Quality’ pillar in the Code of Practice for Statistics.

1. Introduction

These data have been published to provide further context for adult-rape-flagged cases in the Service Justice System (SJS). Rape flagging is a monitoring process usually used by the Crown Service Prosecution to identify and monitor cases involving rape. The flag is applied at any point during the prosecution process where a rape offence is suspected to have occurred, and is maintained even if the final charging decision or case outcome relates to a non-rape offence.

2. Key Point Summary

• In 2024, the median length of time between report of an incident to the Service police and referral to the Service Prosecuting Authority in an adult-rape-flagged case was 148 days. 24% of victims withdrew during this timeframe.

• In 2024, the median length of time between the Service Prosecuting Authority directing trial at the Court Martial and verdict at the Court Martial was 199 days. 0 victims withdrew during this timeframe.

• From 2022 to 2024, the conviction rate for adult-rape-flagged cases irrespective of plea was 53%.

• From 2022 to 2024, the conviction rate in adult-rape-flagged cases excluding guilty pleas was 51%.

3. Using and interpreting the data in this report

The following guide summarises what you can and cannot do when interpreting the statistics in this report.

You can:

• Review the time it takes for a service police investigation, and separately a Service Prosecuting Authority referral to a Court Martial to be completed.

• Review what proportion of victims withdraw from the process during these investigations.

• Review the proportion of adult-rape-flagged cases that are heard at Court Martial that resulted in a guilty charge.

• Find more statistics on sexual offences within the Service Justice System in the Murder, Manslaughter and Sexual Offences in the Service Justice System Official Statistics which are published annually.

You cannot:

• Calculate a total pipeline or timeframe from report of an offence to outcome at Court Martial, as the contained figures relate to discrete cases handled by the service police, or Service Prosecuting Authority within a calendar year. Some cases may appear in both cohorts, but you cannot sum the days for a total pipeline length.

• Determine the reason victims withdraw their support, or how victims feel about the system.

• Reliably compare these figures to figures in the Criminal Justice System, as both have different processes, populations and this difference in profile may cause significant differences that are not due to the performance of each system.

• Determine which offences the guilty charges relate to. A guilty charge in a rape-flagged case relates to any guilty charge once the case is deemed to potentially involve a rape, the final guilty charge may therefore not be a guilty charge of rape but another offence.

• Compare figures in this report to those published in the annual Murder, Manslaughter and Sexual Offences in the Service Justice System Official Statistic, as this report relates to adult-rape-flagged cases which is a definition not used in that Official Statistic.

4. Timeliness of investigation and victim withdrawals

Service police investigations

• For adult-rape-flagged cases reported to the service police in 2024, the median time from the report to referral to the Service Prosecuting Authority was 148 days.  

• During the service police investigation, victims may withdraw their support and from the process. 24% of victims in adult-rape-flagged cases withdrew from a Service Police investigation.

Sexual offences are investigated by the Defence Serious Crime Command, who apply an Evidential Sufficiency Test to decide whether a case should be referred to the Service Prosecuting Authority (SPA) or discontinued. This means that a case may continue to be built by the SPA who may or may not subsequently direct a charge to be heard at the Court Martial dependent on whether the “full code” test is satisfied.

Service Prosecuting Authority investigations

• For adult-rape-flagged cases referred to the Service Prosecuting Authority (SPA) in 2024, the median length of time between referral to the Service Prosecuting Authority and a decision to direct (or not direct) a charge at the Court Martial was 72 days. The median length of time between the SPA directing trial at the Court Martial and verdict at the Court Martial was 199 days.

• During the time between the SPA’s decision to direct trial and verdict at the Court Martial, no victims in adult-rape-flagged cases withdrew from the case.

5. Conviction rate in adult-rape-flagged cases

• For adult-rape-flagged cases dealt with at Court Martial from 2022 to 2024, 53% resulted in at least one guilty charge.

• For adult-rape-flagged cases, excluding those where a defendant pleads guilty, dealt with at Court Martial from 2022 to 2024, 51% resulted in at least one guilty charge.

6. Quality and methodology considerations

When using the data the following considerations of quality should be made:

• These data are extracted from administrative data sources, and so reflect a summary of data as input to service police or Service Prosecuting Authority records. These records’ primary use is to assist in investigations and prosecutions, not statistical release. While analytical quality checks have been carried out, caution should be used when using these statistics.

• The number of adult-rape-flagged cases that are heard by the Court Martial each year is small (fewer than 20 per year). Therefore, the annual conviction rate may be volatile and small changes in Court Martial outcomes may lead to a large change in the conviction rate. In this report this has been mitigated by combining several years of data.

• The Defence Serious Crime Command and the Service Prosecuting Authority do not use adult-rape-monitoring flags in Official Statistics as it is not considered by those bodies that this flagging system used within the Criminal Justice System for administrative purposes is the best approach for the relatively small number of cases of this type in the Service Justice System. Work is ongoing to develop more bespoke systems of recording with the SPA. The MOD has, however, retrospectively applied rape-monitoring flags to administrative data to produce this data set.  The data is accurate to the extent that the flags have been correctly applied within the logic of the rape-monitoring-flag system.

• Conviction-rate data must be treated with caution and are not indicative of the performance of the system, individual agencies or a trial process. A very high conviction rate might indicate that an agency was not putting difficult but properly arguable cases before Boards, for example.  It should be noted that these data do not take into account factors such as the proportion of incidents, charges or cases that come to trial, the profile of cases or the small volume of cases.

When creating the rape-flagged cohort for these data:

• A flag was retrospectively applied to a cohort of cases referred by the Service Police and remained in place even if the charge was not proceeded with, was amended, or dropped. This was conducted with SPA, MOD subject matter experts and analysts - all emulating the constraints of the CJS flagging system.

• Although charges specifically related to a flag may have been considered at the time of the pre-charge decision, the defendant may in fact have been charged with another offence. Similarly, there may be cases where a person was convicted of a lesser offence than that with which they were proceeded against.

• A flag remains in place, even if a decision was taken to charge an alternate offence or where a charge was subsequently amended.

7. Glossary

Adult-rape-flagged case: A case where, during the investigation, there is a suspected rape of an adult. The rape monitoring flag is a case-marker usually applied within the Criminal Justice System (CJS) to identify cases involving allegations or charges of rape. It enables the CJS to track and analyse performance on these cases. A case being rape flagged does not mean that there was a final charge or guilty verdict of a rape.

Defence Serious Crime Command (DSCC):  The Defence Serious Crime Command (DSCC) became operational on 5th December 2022. The DSCC, is an independent, professional, and global Service Police force that has jurisdiction to investigate serious crime alleged to have been committed by persons subject to service law, both in the UK and overseas. The DSCC ensures that reports of serious crime are investigated independently from single service chains of command.

Evidential Sufficiency Test: A test used by service police to determine if there is sufficient evidence to charge a person with an offence if, were the evidence suggesting that the person committed the offence to be adduced in proceedings for the offence, the person could properly be convicted (section 116 Armed Forces Act 2006). If the Evidential Sufficiency Test is met, then the service police must refer the case to the SPA for their further action.

Full-code test: A test applied by the SPA which is substantially the same  as that applied by the Crown Prosecution Service in The Code for Crown Prosecutors.  It has two stages: (i) the evidential stage; followed by (ii) the public interest stage.  There is an additional consideration in relation to the Service interest which the SPA must have regard to: generally speaking, the Service context of a case will make it more serious and favour a prosecution, as offending brings the Armed Forces into disrepute and may involve abuse of power structures.

Service Prosecuting Authority (SPA): The SPA comprises a mixture of civilian and military prosecutors, working under the delegated authority of the Director of Service Prosecutions (DSP) who is a senior civilian lawyer. The SPA reviews cases referred to it by the Service Police, determines whether a prosecution should follow applying the full-code test, and prosecutes appropriate cases at the Court Martial.  The DSP and the SPA act under the general superintendence of the Attorney General and remain fully independent of the military chain of command.