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In 2016, about 90k instances of rape were reported to police [1]. The lowest figure I've seen for the % of accusations that are false is 2% the highest ones fro

In 2016, about 90k instances of rape were reported to police [1]. The lowest figure I've seen for the % of accusations that are false is 2% the highest ones from well reputed sources are in the low 20s but let's go with the FBI's figure of 8% (this is for "provably false" accusations, so it's still only a lower bound). That would mean that of the 90k accusations, we have somewhere between 1.8k to 5.6k false accusations. 35 of which were prosecuted. This is a prosecution rate of roughly 2-0.5%, compared to 5% for rape (this is the figure I most commonly see when discussing the percentage of rapes that are prosecuted). I don't see much evidence to back up the claim that false accusations are prosecuted more frequently than rape. 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_in_the_United_States

DanBC 8y ago
Your post is really confusing. I have already linked the ONS crime survey stats which say there are about 144,000 rapes of women and about 8,000 rapes of men each year, and the CPS stats for prosecutions (4517 April 2017-May 2018). Why are you using the FBI definition when the submitted article is about advice for England, coming from a case in England? https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/mar/13/false-allegations-rape-domestic-violence-rare https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/mar/13/false-... Kier Starmer used to be head of the CPS (the organisation that's releasing this advice) and he says: >In recent years we have worked hard to dispel the damaging myths and stereotypes associated with these cases. One such misplaced belief is that false allegations of rape and domestic violence are rife. This report presents a more accurate picture. I've already linked the report that he's talking about.
- manfredo 8y ago
  Your original claim was, > False accusations of rape are more likely to be prosecuted than rape. We have the rate of prosecution for rape: 4-5%. In order for your claim to be true we need to obtain the rate of prosecution for the false accusation of rape. To do this we need the total number of false accusations and the number of such accusations that were prosecuted. Even with conservative definitions, about 2-8% of accusations are determined to be false (and I'm being generous and not even considering the estimates that don't just examine instances where th allegations are provably false). I found that 90k rapes were reported, which would yield 1.8-5.6k false accusations. Thanks for pointing out the mismatch of the 35 prosecutions for false accusations of rape coming from England and not the US. Unfortunately I was not able to find the number of prosecutions for false accusations of rape in the US (Google gave two whole pages of articles stating that it's important to believe accusers, and no statistics). But if we apply the same analysis with your figures then the results are even worse. Of the 144k alleged rapes we would have 2.8k- 11.4k false accusations. Even if we just used the lowest estimates of the rate of false accusations then it would still only be 35 of the over 2,800 false accusations that get prosecuted - only 1.25%. The higher end for the estimates of the rate of false accusations would put the percent of false accusations that get prosecuted even lower, under one percent.

DanBC 8y ago

Your post is really confusing. I have already linked the ONS crime survey stats which say there are about 144,000 rapes of women and about 8,000 rapes of men each year, and the CPS stats for prosecutions (4517 April 2017-May 2018). Why are you using the FBI definition when the submitted article is about advice for England, coming from a case in England? https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/mar/13/false-allegations-rape-domestic-violence-rare https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/mar/13/false-... Kier Starmer used to be head of the CPS (the organisation that's releasing this advice) and he says: >In recent years we have worked hard to dispel the damaging myths and stereotypes associated with these cases. One such misplaced belief is that false allegations of rape and domestic violence are rife. This report presents a more accurate picture. I've already linked the report that he's talking about.

manfredo 8y ago
Your original claim was, > False accusations of rape are more likely to be prosecuted than rape. We have the rate of prosecution for rape: 4-5%. In order for your claim to be true we need to obtain the rate of prosecution for the false accusation of rape. To do this we need the total number of false accusations and the number of such accusations that were prosecuted. Even with conservative definitions, about 2-8% of accusations are determined to be false (and I'm being generous and not even considering the estimates that don't just examine instances where th allegations are provably false). I found that 90k rapes were reported, which would yield 1.8-5.6k false accusations. Thanks for pointing out the mismatch of the 35 prosecutions for false accusations of rape coming from England and not the US. Unfortunately I was not able to find the number of prosecutions for false accusations of rape in the US (Google gave two whole pages of articles stating that it's important to believe accusers, and no statistics). But if we apply the same analysis with your figures then the results are even worse. Of the 144k alleged rapes we would have 2.8k- 11.4k false accusations. Even if we just used the lowest estimates of the rate of false accusations then it would still only be 35 of the over 2,800 false accusations that get prosecuted - only 1.25%. The higher end for the estimates of the rate of false accusations would put the percent of false accusations that get prosecuted even lower, under one percent.