The importance of the Independent Sexual Violence Advisor (ISVA)/Victim Advocate role in improving victim-survivor experiences of the criminal justice process is consistently documented within international research. The relationship between ISVAs and the criminal justice system, however, is contentious and evolving. Through qualitative analysis of police and ISVA focus groups, undertaken as part of Operation Soteria in England and Wales, this paper explores the police-ISVA relationship. More specifically, it considers the implications of the police-ISVA relationship - and the tensions within it - for the ISVA role. Findings reveal the complex, gendered, and hierarchical nature of the police-ISVA relationship, characterised by their differing remits, goals, status, and relationships with victim-survivors. It is argued that ISVAs ‘walk a tightrope’ in maintaining both their relationship with the police and their independence from the criminal justice system as they work to improve victim-survivor experiences and their access to ‘justice’. While ISVAs attention to non-carceral justice goals and the ways in which they actively challenge and resist problematic police practices trouble the simplistic notion that they are punitively focused or co-opted by state institutions, it is argued that greater understanding of the meaning of ISVA independence and the positioning of their role as ‘advocates’ rather than ‘advisors’ is required to help ameliorate the challenges they encounter in their relationship with the police and ultimately improve victim-survivor experiences.

Though typically instrumental in the research process, coding is a specific way of engaging with complex and emotionally challenging material. The experience of working closely with this type of data can feel insular and extended immersion can place complicated emotional demands on researchers.

Drawing on reflections on coding work undertaken during Operation Soteria, this paper explores the ways in which researchers navigate the experience of coding emotionally challenging material, balancing care for the stories and experiences they code with care for themselves. Within contexts of procedural justice, this paper asserts the need for care at every stage of the research process as a way of ensuring safe, fair, and transformative research practice.

Police treatment of victims of crime, in particular victims of serious crimes, is a blind spot of procedural justice theory. Procedural justice theory is the dominant theoretical paradigm explaining why and how the quality of police interactions impacts people's perceptions of police fairness, their trust in the police, and their willingness to cooperate. However, the theory is most often tested using population surveys about police-initiated contact, where either a person’s options for non-cooperation are limited, e.g. stop and search, or where little is at stake and the encounter is short, e.g. reporting pick-pocketing. Surprisingly little research has explored the applicability of the framework to the context of women's perceptions of police fairness, even less specifically for rape victims whose experiences of police treatment are notoriously poor and willingness to report to police is low. In this article, we provide findings from the first rigorous empirical testing of Procedural justice theory using a large, national online survey of victims of rape and sexual assault whose case has been investigated by a British police force. We argue that procedural justice is important to victims, but so also is the restoration of the agency and communion (feeling connected, understood and accepted) that victimization damages. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications.

Despite a range of attempts to reform legislation, policy and practice around the criminal justice response to rape, victims of sexual violence continue to experience systematic injustices across criminal justice processes. One reason for ongoing failures may be the lack of systematic mechanisms to embed consideration of victims’ rights and interests in policy development and strategic governance. Early findings from Operation Soteria suggested that police forces in England and Wales lacked strategic support and planning to develop policies in ways that carefully considered victims’ rights and also lacked systems to reflect on and embed good practices. We suggest ‘Rape Victim Impact Assessments’ as a framework to centre victims’ rights and interests in the policy development and strategic governance of criminal justice organisations. Impact assessments provide a structure for the systematic and evidence-based consideration of new or changing policies, procedures and practices. Drawing on the experience of impact assessments in other fields, as well as work with experts in policing and sexual violence, this paper discusses the development of a Rape Victim Impact Assessment tool as part of the UK Government Home Office funded Operation Soteria. Lessons from work with police forces in England and Wales to pilot and refine the tool are presented. The paper concludes with learning for criminal justice agencies more broadly around building consideration of victims’ rights and interests in the development of policies, procedures and practices.