READ CATALAN VERSION
Given the alarming increase in sexual assaults, the Government has launched a new Central Intelligence Unit of the Mossos d'Esquadra to analyze the profiles of sexual offenders at risk of recidivism and improve their control. Furthermore, in order to reinforce the fight against this scourge, the Department of the Interior will double the number of agents working in the new Central Sexual Violence Area of the Catalan police. This department will go from having 27 members to 52.
The Minister of the Interior, Joan Ignasi Elena, denounces that "it is not acceptable to live in a society in which women suffer the sexual assaults that they suffer." For this reason, the new strategy is focused on "intensifying pressure and firmness against the aggressor," he adds.
The new Intelligence Unit will centralize the control of aggressors at risk of recidivism or with judicial measures throughout Catalonia and will give action guidelines to all the Investigation Units in the territory. "For the first time, all information on aggressors who have a court or prosecutor's order will be centralized," according to the spokesperson for the Generalitat-Mossos d'Esquadra Police, Montserrat Escudé.
The new strategy guarantees the control of those released from prison, the supervision and coordination with European or international police orders and the control, distribution and assignment in the reference police stations of the judicial requirements regarding the aggressors.
The new strategic intelligence system 2.0 will allow better collection and processing of data for the study of the criminal phenomenon of sexual assaults and, in this way, improve the efficiency and effectiveness of investigations, prevention, victim support and control of aggressors. A dangerousness scale will be created that indicates police risk of criminal recidivism, with the profiles of the aggressors, their modus operandi and their preferences when choosing victims.
In terms of structure, the new Central Sexual Violence Area will have two Central Sexual Violence Units (with teams of investigators specialized in different crime typologies and a Victim Care Group) and a Central Intelligence Unit.
According to data from the Mossos d'Esquadra, in Catalonia there are nearly a thousand sexual offenders who are free and who have a profile of recidivism. Specifically, there are 18 convicts with a high risk of repeating the crime, on whom the Prosecutor's Office has ordered the Catalan police to monitor. There have also been 38 communications of sexual offenders arriving in Catalonia and 937 convicted or charged with judicial measures to prevent the repetition of the crime.
During the first half of this year, the Mossos d'Esquadra have investigated 2,063 complaints of sexual violence, 16% more than during the same period as the previous year. Two out of ten cases have remained unsolved. In 62% of the cases, the perpetrator was known to the victim.
Regarding the victims treated, the number rises to 2,412, of which 87% are women and 935 are minors.
One of the main priorities of the Mossos is the fight against sexual violence, with victims mostly women, and with a very high rate of hidden figures. This commitment has meant that in the last three years we have worked with a new approach model that places the victim at the epicenter, while generating police intelligence and knowledge about the phenomenon.
This model was launched with the creation of the Central Sexual Assault Unit (UCAS) on September 18, 2020 and was strengthened with the launch of the Plan against Sexual Violence and the activation of the Sexual Violence Cabinet in the summer of last year.
The creation of the UCAS marked the beginning of an intervention model on the phenomenon focused on the investigation of sexual crimes with an unknown perpetrator, serial sexual offenders, committed by more than one perpetrator and, in a more global vision, knowing in depth the phenomenon of sexual violence in Catalonia.
