Ah, that pesky presumption of innocence getting in the way of our 100% conviction rate. /s
"The problem is that only a tiny percentage of harassers and rapists are ever convicted. The court -- rightly -- sets a very high bar to conviction, and police and prosecutors often won't even attempt it unless the evidence is overwhelming.".
First, its a poor place and topic for sarcasm (it just an observation, i'm not against it, i do have good friends like that) but more than that, GP actually adressed the point you're trying to highlight in his first sentence.
How can that be known? Why do you presume that someone is a harasser or rapist if they weren't convicted?
Same article notes that between 2-8% of rape complaints are false. Worries about false rape claims are wildly overblown.
If an accusation only has effect if it's proven in court, there will be few of them.
If you can destroy someone's life by a mere accusation, false accusations will be very common. Also, just a threat of such an accusation will be very powerful.
I think we can all agree that the accusers in the Salem witch trials couldn't have been telling the truth, unless they were hallucinating (there's a theory that lysergic acid in grain could have caused hallucinations, but its weak and not proven).
Let's just agree that none of the women executed in Salem were actually practicing black magic. Why were there so many accusers claiming they were? I mean, false accusations are "exceedingly rare" and accusers "gain nothing".
Yeah, people in the 18-35 demographic, to quote Bill Maher, "are the favored advertising demo because they're gullible." They don't know anything about human nature either.
That is a HUGE percent of false accusations! On the high end that's 1 in 10! In the middle, it's 1 in 20. That's a LOT.
A more commonly cited figure is 10%, which comes from the clearance rate of DNA testing kits. i.e. someone accuses a man of rape, there is DNA and it exonerates him. So this is an absolute lower bound because a lot of rape accusations are a bit like this article: "we had sex a bunch of times consensually, and then also when it wasn't". You can't disprove that with DNA evidence but it can still be a false accusation.
Back in the 90s when this stuff was less politicised there was a somewhat rigorous study that put the true figure at around 50% [1]. It gave pie charts of the reasons for the false accusations and other interesting bits of data. This figure causes people to freak out these days due to the "believe the victim" mentality you can see above, where there is a deliberate conflation between accusations of rape and actual rapes, so it gets attacked a lot, but modern scholarship hardly investigates the question of false reporting rates for rape unless the authors already decided their conclusion before doing the research (you can sometimes see admissions of this in the study's discussion sections). The 50% figure has some other support: when interviewed anonymously police workers, both male and female, tend to pick this figure when asked to estimate the false reporting rate.
The low prosecution success rate is usually painted these days as an obvious flaw of the justice system, but that's identity politics. When you drill into it in detail and ask OK, where do these prosecutions go, and why are they dropped, or why do they fail to win in court, the answer is: because a LOT of rape allegations are not only false but clearly false. For example, because the complainant goes to the police and admits they made it up, or because they are clearly high on drugs when making the accusation and rescind it when sober. Even if you engage in some mental gymnastics to assume rescinding an accusation is never valid, it doesn't matter. It's really hard to win in court when the "victim" themselves are claiming they're not really a victim at all.
[1] https://ia800209.us.archive.org/4/items/FalseRapeAllegations...
I wrote a bunch more and gathered some links, but Hacker News is telling me to slow down. 6 comments on this thread since 2pm, wow such spam
> Less than 1% of rapes lead to felony convictions
We can measure the numerator here: it’s the number of felony rape convictions. But how do we measure the denominator? In some rape trials, the central question of fact is whether a rape occurred at all, or if the sexual encounter was consensual. If a rape trial leads to acquittal based on reasonable doubt over that question, is that alleged rape included in the denominator or not?
> Same article notes that between 2-8% of rape complaints are false.
So here’s a different question. If 2-8% of rape “complaints” are false, then clearly we aren’t counting these false accusations in the denominator for the 1% figure, are we? But what do we do with the cases we can’t determine with certainty either way?
One way of interpreting these numbers might be:
* 92-98% of rape accusations are not provably false.
* 1% of the remaining accusations are provably true. 1% of 98% is still roughly 1%, so we’ll round to 1% of all rape accusations are provably true.
* 91-97% of rape accusations can’t be proven.
Does this make sense? A 90% acquittal rate for rape cases? That seems way out of line with other criminal justice statistics. So at some point we’re including accusations that never even result in charges being filed due to lack of evidence, and possibly accusations that are never brought to the criminal justice system in the first place. In either case, this vast majority of cases is legally indeterminate: neither conclusively proven to be rapes committed by a specific suspect, nor conclusively proven to be false accusations.
Surely, there is a much lower burden of proof for this statistical methodology deciding that a rape occurred than there is for a court of law to determine that a particular rapist is guilty of rape. By what standard do you jump to the conclusion that the criminal justice system should lower the necessary burden of proof to incarcerate someone, and not that this statistical methodology should perhaps raise the burden of proof it requires? To be blunt, do you seriously think the American criminal justice system doesn’t incarcerate enough people?
The article cited[0] is a review of analysis from ~1980 to 2005. If you restrict yourself to only analysis that don't count cases involving alcohol as false reports, the number drops to 2-3%.
The article also notes that false reports are usually different from real reports, important among these facts is that false reports are often attention seeking, and so are examples of what society thinks rape "should" look like (violent, anonymous) as opposed to what it often is (ambiguous and often by someone the victim knows and trusts). As such, the percent of false rape accusations where a particular individual is accused of the crime are likely even lower than this 2-3% number.
> but it’s much more important that the innocent are not wrongfully punished
This depends. It's much less morally cut and dry than you claim.
[0]: https://www.nsvrc.org/sites/default/files/publications/2018-...
Also no it’s pretty cut and dry: if you punish someone who is innocent under ANY circumstance without reviewing the case under a very critical eye you might as well throw out the justice system entirely, break out the torches and pitchforks and start gathering wood for the witch burning.
Why are you taking a particular stand here about a person who probably did a thing that's much worse than the average thing that results in extrajudicial punishment, has so far received absolutely zero consequences, and is unlikely to receive many beyond his decision to no longer speak at conferences? Like why die on this hill when there are so many other forms of worse extrajudicial punishment that happen every day?
What the linked article is talking about, though, does not seem to be „rape” as defined by a criminal code, so all this rape discussion hardly applies.
Nevertheless, one can be a creepy disgusting asshole and still not do things which are illegal, technically speaking.
If so, what form would that evidence take?
If not, you're really arguing based on faith, not evidence, right?
Complaints is the key here. Obviously, we can't say much about the incidents that don't go reported. If one looks at the conviction rate for rape complaints it's around 2%. So if we take the lower estimate for false complaints, it still means that only 4% of cases are provable one way or the other, and that those which are have a 50/50 chance of being true or false complaints. (I'm looking at '92 stats, at a glance it appears the the rates for both rape and false rape convictions have risen a fair bit since then).
Interestingly, a 2% conviction rate is on par with that of robbery.
https://blogs.findlaw.com/blotter/2017/07/how-often-do-rape-...
Not prosecuted != not provable. Not provable != false.
Fair enough. Only 4% are known to be provable.
>Not provable != false
I neither claimed nor implied this. My point could be summed up as not provable != true.
What are these imperfect measures? How imperfect are they?
Think about what evidence would it take for you to be convinced consent was absent, beyond a reasonable doubt; and how would you provide that evidence if you were a victim in the situation in the article.
On the other hand, many false rape accusations are fabricated with completely made up details. Depending on the details, it can be easy to prove the accused (or the accuser) wasn't in the place claimed, or other details don't fit.
Car break-ins outnumber car thefts by several orders of magnitude. Assaults outnumber murders by probably a similiar amount.
I'd be very suspicious if there was a class of crime where any large fraction of instances result in higher level charges being brought. Especially with how plea deals work.
>between 2-8% worries about false rape claims are wildly overblown.
If 2% of the time cops fired their weapons it blew up in their hand or 2% of car crashes resulted in a fatality it would be an outrage.
2-8% is huge when you're talking about people's lives being permanently altered for the worse.
If anything the worries are under-blown. But then again, when compared to the rest of the court system (not that long ago they were framing random minorities in order to close cases) and prosecution process 2-8% might not be that bad.
And if not, doesn't that imply you also agree (to an extent) that trials/law enforcement on heavily politicized cases have the potential to be totally mismanaged and end in injustice?
He's lucky he was a wealthy celebrity or he wouldn't have gotten the full protection that the courts supposedly afford to the accused.
I know literally dozens of stories like that, and maybe a handful where the harasser or rapist was punished at all. Of those, even fewer where they were convicted of a crime.
The majority of these cases the victim isn't public in their accusation, there's no argument that they're trying to gain something or hurt someone else. So by comparing the data that is presumably more honest, that people make in private, to that in public, we can assume that most instances of harassment go unpunished.
Rape convictions are so abysmally low that there's been a lot of rethinking in feminist circles as to whether the "beyond reasonable doubt" standard -- or even the presumption of innocence -- is fair or just. Some countries have been looking for ways to ameliorate this. For example, in thr USA, college date rape is such a problem that universities are required to investigate accusations of sexual harassment or assault and discipline offenders based on the looser preponderance standard, or be found in violation of Title IX by the federal Department of Education.
So it seems we’re pretty good at convicting rapists, it’s the arresting that we’re bad at. And since RAINN [1] estimates that only 230/1000 are reported to police and of those only 43 lead to arrest and 9 to prosecution. If the ratios stay the same, then if we reported every rape then convictions would increase 4x.
[0] Table 21, as of 2009 https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/fdluc09.pdf [1] https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/fdluc09.pdf
Huh? Have you ever heard of the Central Park Five? Google "Central Park Five" and you'll have a more enlightened view!
You think the City just handed over tens of millions of dollars because settling would be cheaper then going to trial?
And cities often settle lawsuits regardless of guilt to avoid the costs of going to trial as well as the risks of public backlash. Notably in this specific case, the decision to settle was a political decision after DeBlasio was elected mayor.
I assure you, if that was the case, there would be a lot more multi-millionaires in NYC because the local police play it pretty fast 'n loose with the civil rights of citizens.
And again, the City didn't hand over forty-million to get rid of a nuisance lawsuit. They have lawyers on staff -- it would probably cost under a million dollars for the city to go to trial.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Park_jogger_case
>From the outset the case was a topic of national interest, with the commentary on social issues evolving as the details emerged. Initially, the case led to public discourse about New York City's perceived lawlessness, criminal behavior by youths, and violence toward women. After the exonerations, it became a high-profile example of racial profiling, discrimination, and inequality in the media and legal system. All five defendants subsequently sued the City of New York for malicious prosecution, racial discrimination and emotional distress; the City settled the suit in 2014 for $41 million.
https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/the-central-park-five/convictio...
>On December 19, 2002, Justice Charles J. Tejada of the Supreme Court of the State of New York granted a motion to vacate the thirteen-year-old convections in the infamous case. He did so based on new evidence: a shocking confession from a serial rapist, Matias Reyes, and a positive DNA match to back it up. A year later, the men filed civil lawsuits against the City of New York, and the police officers and prosecutors who had worked toward their conviction. In 2014, they settled that civil case for $41 million dollars. Despite their exoneration, the police and prosecutors involved in the case maintain that they were guilty of the crime.
https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-48609693
>Five black and Hispanic boys, aged between 14 and 16, would be found guilty and jailed for the crime.
>They became known as the Central Park Five.
>But they never committed the crime.
[...]
>The role of Donald Trump
>New York in the 80s and 90s was much more dangerous than it is today.
>Race relations were strained - especially when it came to the police.
>Meanwhile, Donald Trump - then a New York property mogul - seemed convinced the teens were guilty.
>He spent a reported $85,000 (around £138,000 today) on four full-page adverts in New York newspapers titled: "Bring Back The Death Penalty, Bring Back Our Police!".
>He wrote: "I want to hate these murderers and I always will. I am not looking to psychoanalyse or understand them, I am looking to punish them."
>In an interview with CNN at the time, he said: "Maybe hate is what we need if we're gonna get something done."
"In its January 2003 Armstrong Report, the panel "did not dispute the legal necessity of setting aside the convictions of the five defendants based on the new DNA evidence that Mr. Reyes had raped the jogger."[103] But it disputed acceptance of Reyes's claim that he alone had raped the jogger.[103][104] It said there was "nothing but his uncorroborated word" that he acted alone.[103] Armstrong said the panel believed "the word of a serial rapist killer is not something to be heavily relied upon."[103]
The report concluded that the five men whose convictions had been vacated had "most likely" participated in the beating and rape of the jogger and that the "most likely scenario" was that "both the defendants and Reyes assaulted her, perhaps successively."[103] The report said Reyes had most likely "either joined in the attack as it was ending or waited until the defendants had moved on to their next victims before descending upon her himself, raping her and inflicting upon her the brutal injuries that almost caused her death."[103]"
Check these two quotes from the same wikipedia page[0]:
>In addition, his [Reyes's] DNA matched the DNA evidence at the scene, confirming that he was the sole source of the semen found in and on the victim "to a factor of one in 6,000,000,000 people".
>DNA analysis of the strands of hair found on the clothing of two of the defendants, conducted with advanced technology not available at the time of their trial, established that the hair did not belong to the victim, despite what the prosecution had testified to at trial
The second one circumstantially supports that the defendants weren't involved, but the first one pretty much proves that the defendants weren't at the scene. Unless you want to claim that the defendants fully sanitized the victim after they assaulted her, leaving no traces of their DNA on or inside of her. I haven't heard that being claimed anywhere on the wikipedia page though.
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Park_jogger_case#Assai...
In any case, prosecutors were well aware the defendants were innocent. Once they saw the crime scene it was apparent that there was just one assailant.
However, they had a big problem. How could they find the actual rapist? They had five innocent defendants in custody and it would embarrassing to everyone to just let them out. So, prosecutors framed them for the rape.
You're concerned that this is stacked against you, but the courts are stacked against the victims. So it doesn't really suffice to decry the one problem without addressing the other.
So perhaps you can see what it looks like to many women when you say, "Hey, I'm sorry this happened to you, but this bad thing happened to my brother, so _shrug_". Did your brother go to the courts and police to address these issues? It may been unlawful termination.
There is a large domain of behavior that is either nebulously legal or difficult to prosecute but which makes our communities much, much worse. It's counterproductive to tell the people victimized by that to stop talking about it. The solution is to go forward and find ways to set up our communities to protect people. And that can't mean just asking victims to accept that.