Originally a comment by Colin Daniels on Many other women and girls.

Obviously this has been going for a very long time but here in the UK the situation was exacerbated a decade or two ago when the government introduced “league tables”, ostensibly to give the public a measure of how well various institutions were performing. They did it for things like education, health and policing.

What happened, in fact, was that institutions began to focus their efforts in areas that pushed them up the table, in order to increase the funding that they received. “Problem” children, that are difficult to teach; patients, that are difficult to treat; and cases, that are difficult to prosecute, are ignored in favour of easy wins.

And thus the police/CPS are extremely reluctant to spend time and effort on cases that they know will have a hard time getting through court proceedings.

And because these cases are hardly ever seen the impression is given that the problem is not large enough to warrant extra funding. And so the cycle continues.