Decisions on cautioning are entirely an operational matter for local police forces. Serious sexual offences are very unlikely to be suitable for a caution. In a small number of cases local police and CPS may decide that it is not in the public interest to take a case to court (e.g. where a 16-year-old boy has consensual sex with his 15-year-old girlfriend).
Data from the court proceedings database held by the Office for Criminal Justice Reform on the number of defendants cautioned for rape and other sexual offences in the relevant police force areas in England between 1997 and 2005 can be viewed in the following table.
Rape offences Bedfordshire Cambridgeshire Essex Hertfordshire Norfolk Suffolk England 1997 0 3 3 3 0 0 26 1998 1 1 2 3 3 4 25 1999 0 3 3 1 1 1 32 2000 0 1 2 0 0 8 37 2001 0 2 1 0 2 2 39 2002 0 4 1 0 2 3 31 2003 0 1 1 1 2 5 39 2004 0 2 4 0 1 2 40 2005 0 0 0 0 0 2 22 1 These data are on the principal offence basis. 2 Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from large administrative data systems generated by the courts and police forces. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when those data are used. 3 Includes data from the Sexual Offences Act 2003, which came into force on 1 May 2003. 4 Staffordshire police force were only able to submit sample data for persons proceeded against and convicted in the magistrates courts for the year 2000. Although sufficient to estimate higher orders of data, these data are not robust enough at a detailed level and have been excluded from the table. Source: Office for Criminal Justice Reform—Ministry of Justice
Other sexual offences Bedfordshire Cambridgeshire Essex Hertfordshire Norfolk Suffolk England 1997 21 30 49 7 38 26 1,782 1998 25 24 51 16 36 26 1,596 1999 14 29 39 18 18 21 1,346 2000 12 16 36 22 18 26 1,175 2001 22 23 26 10 15 28 1,143 2002 37 16 30 6 13 20 1,091 2003 19 19 30 11 29 28 1,226 2004 27 22 30 27 38 41 1,424 2005 13 32 40 27 30 28 1,643 1 These data are on the principal offence basis. 2 Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from large administrative data systems generated by the courts and police forces. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when those data are used. 3 Includes data from the Sexual Offences Act 2003, which came into force on 1 May 2003. 4 Staffordshire police force were only able to submit sample data for persons proceeded against and convicted in the magistrates' courts for the year 2000. Although sufficient to estimate higher orders of data, these data are not robust enough at a detailed level and have been excluded from the table. Source: Office for Criminal Justice Reform—Ministry of Justice