Communicating safety: how do institutional stakeholders mobilise the myth of bail as protection to shape the status, position and safety of women who report rape?

Abstract

Previous research has revealed gaps in understanding of where trust in the efficacy of the justice system to adequately safeguard victim-survivors of rape (post-reporting) originates, but it is clear on many occasions that trust is misplaced. This research illuminates the discursive tactics that connect bail with victim-survivor protection and explore this discourse as a contested site of meaning for women who report rape and professionals. Using a theoretical synthesis of myth, affect and discourse, I follow the relational effects of commitments to bail as protection, how they travel across institutions, groups and individuals and what the consequences are for victim-survivors of rape. Given the limited evidence base on bail use, a qualitative methodology centring women’s experiences and expectations of bail as protection was chosen in dialogue with associated data sources. These include interviews with women victim-survivors, criminal justice actors and professionals from specialist sexual and domestic abuse organisations, social care, education, housing, health, justice campaigners and a court reporter. Documentary analysis of texts spanned national guidance from criminal justice agencies, government reviews and independent justice inspectorates, as well as documents from the specialist women’s sector. Findings reveal the ineffectiveness of bail as protection to be widely understood by criminal justice actors who preserve the myth of bail as protection through practices of productive and reliable ignorance, to maintain its legitimacy with victim-survivors. Professionals who mediate between criminal justice actors and victim-survivors, find themselves in anxious spaces of affective tension caused by ignorance, ambiguity and uncertainty. Suspicions that bail as protection is a myth sit awkwardly with limited possible actions and work against their professional commitment to victim-survivors. The consequences for victim-survivors affect their credibility, responsibilities, status as a victim, protection claims - and ultimately advantage suspected rapists.