Tea for twelve: police intervention animations and their impact on jury decision making in sexual offence cases

Juries are a pivotal aspect of the British adversarial system and yet there have been calls to have them abolished for rape trials due to the low conviction rate. With the knowledge we have regarding the effectiveness of computer animations, it is hypothesised that presenting a consent-explaining animation to jurors during rape trials may increase guilty verdicts and juror confidence. One hundred and fifty participants were provided online questionnaires and divided into conditions where they either watched the Thames Valley Police “Tea and Consent” anti-rape animation or the COVID-19 British televised advert, then presented with a three-minute clip of a fictional rape trial. Participants were asked to state whether the defendant was guilty or not guilty of rape and rate on a scale from 1-5 how confident they were of this decision. Finally, they were asked to complete their agreement of statements from a 22-scale inventory known as the Illinois Rape Myth Scale. Results indicated that those who viewed the consent animation provided more guilty verdicts and higher confidence ratings than those who watched the COVID-19 video and agreed to less rape myths. Additionally, men provided more not-guilty verdicts and agreed to more rape myths than women, concluding that computer-generated exhibits have a significant impact on conviction rates for rape and confidence levels