The role of the supervisor in RASSO investigations

Cooper, Linda and Moody, Liz (2025) The role of the supervisor in RASSO investigations. In: Building foundations for change in rape and serious sexual offence investigations. Routledge, Abingdon, UK. (In Press)

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Abstract

The supervisor role is pivotal in policing teams, but especially so in the context of Rape and Serious Sexual Offences (RASSO) due to the often complex and time-consuming nature of the cases. We discuss the breadth of skills required to be a supervisor of a RASSO team, underpinned by the need for organisational support to undertake such a demanding role. For the purposes of the Pillar 4 work, there is a focus on how supervisors support the learning and wellbeing of multiple team members, alongside their own workload, professional development and wellbeing needs. The first year of Pillar 4’s deep dives into each of the five pathfinder forces identified a transactional approach to the training of supervisors, with a lack of resourcing and access to formal training, and the reliance on more experienced officers to manage less experienced teams (Gov.UK, 2022). Training is considered an abstraction from duty, with little time for reflection and discussion between teams on the learning outcomes of each case. This early analysis led to a further piece of work, informing Operation Soteria with a training needs analysis of supervisors (Moody, 2023), the findings of which form the basis of this chapter.

Item Type: Book Section
Uncontrolled Keywords: RASSO, supervisors, policing, rape, learning, wellbeing
Subjects: H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General)
Divisions: Other Departments (Central units) > Research Directorate
Depositing User: Linda Cooper
Date Deposited: 05 Mar 2026 13:48
Last Modified: 05 Mar 2026 13:48
URI: https://oars.uos.ac.uk/id/eprint/5436

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