Report by the Public Prosecutor's Task Force on the Procedural Time of Sexual Offences

On 19 January 2022, the Directorate of Public Prosecutions appointed a working group on the procedure period for sexual offences. The letter of appointment states that discussions have taken place within the forum of the commissioner of police, the district prosecutor and the public prosecutor that it would be very useful to review sexual offence cases where the procedure period was long, look at which issues were the most delayed in handling the cases and whether and, if so, how procedures could be changed and improved while reducing the length of the procedure. The Directorate of Public Prosecutions considered it appropriate to consider only violations of Article 194 of the Penal Code, i.e. offences committed by rape, but left it to the task force to decide what period the review process would take.

The working group was composed of Dröfn Kjærnested, assistant prosecutor at the District Prosecutor, Eyþór Þorbergsson, assistant prosecutor at the Police Commissioner in northern Iceland, Guðmundur Sigurðsson, research officer at the Suðurnes Police Commissioner, María Káradóttir, assistant prosecutor and team leader at the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Rannveig Þórisdóttir, deputy director at the National Commissioner of Police, Ævar Pálmi Pálmason, assistant commissioner of police at the Metropolitan Police and Margrét Unnur Rögnvaldsdóttir, prosecutor at the Public Prosecutor, who also led the work of the group.