Overcrowding Under The Disciplinary Umbrella: Challenges Of Investigating And Punishing Sexual Misconduct Cases In Universities

The last year has seen a revolt against the recommendations of the Zellick Report (1994) in England and Wales, and pressure on universities worldwide to bring serious criminal conduct within their own disciplinary structures. This paper examines the reasons why the Zellick Report advised against this, and why higher-education institutions have now turned their back on a number of its recommendations. Factors including student pressure and concerns about low conviction rates for sexual offences in the criminal courts have been cited, but this paper argues that universities will struggle to create a disciplinary system that is fair to both those who are accused of such offences and those who have been victims of them. A recent Universities UK report has reversed the Zellick guidance that conduct amounting to a serious criminal offence should never be pursued under university disciplinary structures. Drawing on both authors' experiences as practitioners, and using the first author's experience of university disciplinary matters as a case-study, this paper reviews the practical problems of bringing such serious conduct under university disciplinary structures, focusing particularly on the intersection of criminal and internal disciplinary proceedings. It concludes by suggesting possible ways of ameliorating these.