New DPP announced and she's a woman

Alison Saunders takes over as Director of Public Prosecutions later this year.

Last week the Crown Prosecution Service announced that Alison Saunders would be the new Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), and will take over from Keir Starmer in November.

She will be the head of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), responsible for deciding whether or not to prosecute people for crimes and what the charges should be.

She is the second woman to hold the job.

According to the Guardian, Saunders is one of the most experienced prosecutors in the country.  She has worked on some of the most high-profile cases, such as the retrial of Stephen Lawrence’s killers and the successful conviction of David Mulcahy, the ‘railway rapist’, who was convicted of a series of rapes and murders in the 1980s.

In 2011 she and her staff kept the courts open day and night to prosecute suspects following the London riots.  She was awarded a CBE in 2012.

Saunders joined the CPS in 1986 when it was first formed after spending time advising underwriters at Lloyds of London, which she described as ‘a bit boring’.

She spent time at the CPS policy unit, where she developed expertise in child victims and child witnesses, as well as a stint at its Serious Crimes Unit which deals with offences like people trafficking and drug running.

She is currently head of the Crown Prosecution Service in London.

Saunders has strongly-held views about rape. In an interview for the Guardian last year she said she was frustrated by how many rape trials end in acquittals and said society was lagging behind the legal system when it came to its view of women.

She and her colleagues have done a lot of work to challenge myths and stereotypes about rape within the CPS, but in an interview with the Guardian last year she acknowledged that there was still a lot of work to be done with juries.

“We have had consultant psychiatrists to talk to us about things like – you cannot expect a rape victim to break down in tears, you cannot expect them to tell the story straight.

“You can see how some members of the jury can come along with preconceived ideas. They might still subscribe to the myths and stereotypes that we have all had a go at busting,” she said.

Story published on Women's Views on News, 1 August 2013