Enabling Change in the Investigation of Rape and Serious Sexual Offending

Operation Soteria-a major Home Office-funded initiative-examined how police investigate rape and serious sexual offences. This book focuses on a critical but often overlooked aspect of that project: the role of learning, development, and officer wellbeing in these challenging investigations. The book challenges a widespread assumption: that more training and continuous professional development will fix the persistent failures in rape investigation. The research reveals something more troubling. The way police training is currently designed and delivered isn't solving the deep-rooted problems; in fact, it has become part of the problem itself. Organisations retreat into training programmes as a comfortable response that creates an illusion of progress to an external audience, whilst the underlying cultures and structures that produce failures remain unchanged and unchallenged. For students, this book offers fresh perspectives on organisational justice and change theories in action. You'll see how organisations can fail to support their own people even when they appear to be taking positive steps, and understand why genuine transformation requires confronting uncomfortable truths rather than deferring difficult conversations. For practitioners and leaders, this is about moving beyond performative solutions. Officers investigating these crimes need real empowerment and support, not just training courses whose learning is neither valued nor embedded. We examine how the current approach affects officer welfare, shapes demand management, impacts victim services, and ultimately undermines organisational health. Most importantly, we explore how policing organisations can achieve genuine transformational change by addressing core systemic issues. The book provides practical, evidence-based tools for demand modelling, strategic change planning, and assessing officer learning-all grounded on rigorous theoretical foundations. The aim is to help prevent the incremental build-up of burnout whilst building investigation capacity that serves both officers and victims effectively. This collection speaks to police professionals, criminal justice practitioners, policymakers, and anyone seeking to understand why meaningful change in this critical area of policing remains so elusive-and what we can actually do about it.

Emma Williams is Professor of Applied Research in Uniformed Public Services and Director of the Centre of Excellence for Equity in Uniformed Public Services, Anglia Ruskin University.

1. Introduction 2. Developing Co-Production in RASSO Research Methodologies 3. Providing a Professional Service: Wellbeing, learning and organisational justice in rape investigations 4. Considering gender in the care of victims of rape and sexual offending 5. A Coproduced Pilot Prototype Model for Critical Reflection in the Investigation of Rape and Serious Sexual Offences 6. Re-engineering learning approaches for RASSO investigators: Embedding new knowledge, attitudes, and skills 7. Assessing knowledge in policing 8. The Complexities of the Role of the Supervisor 9. Capacity: a pre-requisite for change? 10. Theory of Change and its Role in Improving the Quality of Rape Investigations in Policing in England and Wales 11. Conclusion