Data showing the number of defendants found guilty of rape, broken down by age group, in England and Wales from 1997 to 2006 are in the following table.
The statistics relate to persons for whom these offences were the principal offences for which they were dealt with. When a defendant has been found guilty of two or more offences the principal offence is the offence for which the heaviest penalty is imposed. Where the same disposal is imposed for two or more offences, the offence selected is the offence for which the statutory maximum penalty is the most severe.
Age 1997 1998 1999 20004 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 10-15 20 8 19 12 15 8 14 10 25 31 16-18 45 21 39 37 31 28 26 28 66 63 19-25 72 95 62 77 79 76 107 148 127 142 26-30 72 72 64 66 54 73 67 77 65 72 31 and over 308 375 377 313 315 363 369 381 411 446 All ages 517 571 561 505 494 548 583 644 694 754 1 The following offences and statutes have been included in the above data; Rape of a female aged under 16. - Sexual Offences Act 2003 S.1 Rape of a female aged 16 or over. - Sexual Offences Act 2003 S.1 Rape of a male aged under 16. - Sexual Offences Act 2003 S.1 Rape of a male aged 16 or over - Sexual Offences Act 2003 S.1 Rape of a female child under 13 by a male - Sexual Offences Act 2003 S. 5 Rape of a male child under 13 by a male - Sexual Offences Act 2003 S. 5 2 These data are on the principal offence basis. 3 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. 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.