Police perceptions of online dating sexual offence investigation DMP

<p dir="ltr">This study is part of a PhD that focuses on ‘Online Dating Initiated Sexual Offending.’ The study follows on from a series of qualitative interviews with police officers, the analysis of which, suggested that police officers may be anticipating victim blaming by other parts of the criminal justice system and thus impacting their own investigations and the progress of their cases. Using the qualitative interviews to inform the current quantitative research, this vignette study, with police officer participants, looks at whether the Police and Criminal Prosecution Service may be prematurely closing online dating initiated sexual offence cases due to a pre-empting of victim blaming at court and concerns of the burden of the court process on victims.

Three variables will be manipulated, including alcohol consumption, sexual communication before meeting in person and length of time spent communicating before meeting in person. All three variables were revealed as being important in the thematic analysis which preceded this study. The vignette aims to build on the previous qualitative study, considering the three variables and the likelihood of police officers anticipating that other areas of the criminal justice system will victim blame and therefore not prioritise the case or close it early.</p>