Police Scotland recently stated that a person directly charged with rape or attempted rape could be recorded as female. The Scottish Government has stated that ‘this is a matter for Police Scotland’. Rape is defined in law as involving penetration by a penis without consent and is therefore, by definition, the act of a male body (cases involving a surgically constructed penis appear to be unknown to date). Women may be charged with rape as accessories, but this is extremely rare. Only a very small proportion of offenders directly charged with rape or attempted rape would therefore need to be recorded as female to have a substantial and misleading effect on the understanding of female offending. The same issue appears to arise for information collected in other parts of the criminal justice system. Recording sex accurately in these cases matters for data accuracy and trust in official statistics, public policy, media reporting, research, and for trust in public bodies.
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