7 ms·

Less than 1% of rapes lead to felony convictions: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/10/06/less-than-percent-rapes-lead-felony-convictions-least-perce

by lukasb 5y ago

Less than 1% of rapes lead to felony convictions: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/10/06/less-than-percent-rapes-lead-felony-convictions-least-percent-victims-face-emotional-physical-consequences/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/10/06/less-than... Same article notes that between 2-8% of rape complaints are false. Worries about false rape claims are wildly overblown.

ALittleLight 5y ago
Doesn't your set of statistics show that rape accusations are 2-8 times as likely to be proven false as they are to be proven true?
- toast0 5y ago
  Rape is hard to prove. If one party claims consent was obtained and the other that it wasn't, and there is no recording, it's going to be difficult to make a finding of fact based on the testimony of the two parties. In the absence of clear evidence of lack of consent, with no further evidence, I would expect most cases to result in a finding of not-guilty or not to ever result in a charge. 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.
  - ALittleLight 5y ago
    Sure but the statistics, 1% of reported rapes lead to conviction and 2-8% are shown to be false, do not support the conclusion that false report of rape is not a big issue.
WesolyKubeczek 5y ago
And yet you wouldn’t like to fall within those 2-8%.
- lukasb 5y ago
  Aren't you more worried about the 99% of rape victims who receive no justice of any kind?
  - suifbwish 5y ago
    No. The two concepts have nothing to do with eachother. It’s bad that victims don’t get justice but it’s also bad if people are convicted of crimes they didn’t commit. Wrongfully punishing people without sound evidence just to satisfy the feelings of someone who was wronged is not a sane justice system.
    - lukasb 5y ago
      Is there any evidence that would convince you that actual rapes are a more prevalent and more important problem than false claims of rape? If so, what form would that evidence take? If not, you're really arguing based on faith, not evidence, right?
  - WesolyKubeczek 5y ago
    I am, and still I prefer a system where some guilty people will avoid a punishment versus an overreaching system which will also punish some innocent people for some kind of a greater good. 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.
epicureanideal 5y ago
> Same article notes that between 2-8% of rape complaints are false. Worries about false rape claims are wildly overblown. 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.
- nawgz 5y ago
  Yet you express no concern at the amount of unprosecuted cases...
  - suifbwish 5y ago
    The cases would be prosecuted if there was evidence to support them. You can’t just punish people without proof. Contrary to popular belief the purpose of the legal system is not to make wronged people feel better.
    - nawgz 5y ago
      So you think a crime as endemic as rape which is punished at vanishingly low rates indicates innocence of the perps instead of a fundamentally flawed justice system, starting at the point of evidence collection? Even after seeing those very evidence collectors, the police, flaunt their duties and the law repeatedly? Interesting.
      - suifbwish 5y ago
        The idea of someone being able to accuse someone else of a crime without evidence should terrify anyone who believes in freedom and democracy. Rape, murder, or any other crime.
        joshuamorton 5y ago
        What does that have to do with this article? Are you saying that the OP has requested this person be criminally convicted?
BurningFrog 5y ago
The number of fake rape complaint surely depends on how they're treated. 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.
- JPKab 5y ago
  You're on point with this. 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.
suifbwish 5y ago
The article notes that 2-8% of rape cases are PROVEN false. The real number is definitely higher than that as people do go to prison under wrongful conviction. Bottom line is if you don’t have compelling evidence for a crime you don’t have a case. That’s a good thing as it protects us from unjust punishment most of the time. It’s real sad that victims that can’t prove their case don’t have justice but it’s much more important that the innocent are not wrongfully punished.
- joshuamorton 5y ago
  It doesn't actually say that. 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/2018-10/Lisak-False-Reports-Moving-beyond.pdf https://www.nsvrc.org/sites/default/files/publications/2018-...
  - suifbwish 5y ago
    This doesn’t seem very scientific. You can’t determine if someone is lying based on them “seeming like an attention seeker or not” deductive reasoning in a legal system demands “beyond a shadow of a doubt” certainty before convictions are made. 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.
    - joshuamorton 5y ago
throwaway0a5e 5y ago
>Less than 1% of rapes lead to felony convictions 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.
chmod600 5y ago
From your source: "...based on the best of the imperfect measures available." What are these imperfect measures? How imperfect are they?
philwelch 5y ago
How are these numbers even measurable? > 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.
- elzbardico 5y ago
  We should also take into account that this number of false accusations is probably the number where this was clearly determined by the court, probably with legal repercussions for the accuser. The real number probably is higher
- lukasb 5y ago
  jfengel's comment was all about how the very high bar the criminal justice system sets for arrests/prosecutions/convictions for sexual assault is not the appropriate bar for the community to use to keep itself safe. So the low conviction rate is not helping you here.
  - deleted 5y ago
Grieving 5y ago
>2-8% of rape complaints are false 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-charges-lead-to-sex-crime-convictions.html https://blogs.findlaw.com/blotter/2017/07/how-often-do-rape-...
- lukasb 5y ago
  "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." Not prosecuted != not provable. Not provable != false.
  - Grieving 5y ago
    >Not prosecuted != not provable 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.
JamesBarney 5y ago
I think that's 2-8% where there is quite a bit of evidence that the allegations false. Quite a few allegations there isn't evidence either way besides the accounts of the two individuals.

by lukasb 5y ago

ALittleLight 5y ago

Doesn't your set of statistics show that rape accusations are 2-8 times as likely to be proven false as they are to be proven true?

toast0 5y ago
Rape is hard to prove. If one party claims consent was obtained and the other that it wasn't, and there is no recording, it's going to be difficult to make a finding of fact based on the testimony of the two parties. In the absence of clear evidence of lack of consent, with no further evidence, I would expect most cases to result in a finding of not-guilty or not to ever result in a charge. 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.
- ALittleLight 5y ago
  Sure but the statistics, 1% of reported rapes lead to conviction and 2-8% are shown to be false, do not support the conclusion that false report of rape is not a big issue.

WesolyKubeczek 5y ago

And yet you wouldn’t like to fall within those 2-8%.

lukasb 5y ago
Aren't you more worried about the 99% of rape victims who receive no justice of any kind?
- suifbwish 5y ago
  No. The two concepts have nothing to do with eachother. It’s bad that victims don’t get justice but it’s also bad if people are convicted of crimes they didn’t commit. Wrongfully punishing people without sound evidence just to satisfy the feelings of someone who was wronged is not a sane justice system.
  - lukasb 5y ago
    Is there any evidence that would convince you that actual rapes are a more prevalent and more important problem than false claims of rape? If so, what form would that evidence take? If not, you're really arguing based on faith, not evidence, right?
- WesolyKubeczek 5y ago
  I am, and still I prefer a system where some guilty people will avoid a punishment versus an overreaching system which will also punish some innocent people for some kind of a greater good. 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.

epicureanideal 5y ago

> Same article notes that between 2-8% of rape complaints are false. Worries about false rape claims are wildly overblown. 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.

nawgz 5y ago
Yet you express no concern at the amount of unprosecuted cases...
- suifbwish 5y ago
  The cases would be prosecuted if there was evidence to support them. You can’t just punish people without proof. Contrary to popular belief the purpose of the legal system is not to make wronged people feel better.
  - nawgz 5y ago
    So you think a crime as endemic as rape which is punished at vanishingly low rates indicates innocence of the perps instead of a fundamentally flawed justice system, starting at the point of evidence collection? Even after seeing those very evidence collectors, the police, flaunt their duties and the law repeatedly? Interesting.
    - suifbwish 5y ago
      The idea of someone being able to accuse someone else of a crime without evidence should terrify anyone who believes in freedom and democracy. Rape, murder, or any other crime.
      - joshuamorton 5y ago
        What does that have to do with this article? Are you saying that the OP has requested this person be criminally convicted?

BurningFrog 5y ago

The number of fake rape complaint surely depends on how they're treated. 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.

JPKab 5y ago
You're on point with this. 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.

suifbwish 5y ago

The article notes that 2-8% of rape cases are PROVEN false. The real number is definitely higher than that as people do go to prison under wrongful conviction. Bottom line is if you don’t have compelling evidence for a crime you don’t have a case. That’s a good thing as it protects us from unjust punishment most of the time. It’s real sad that victims that can’t prove their case don’t have justice but it’s much more important that the innocent are not wrongfully punished.

joshuamorton 5y ago
It doesn't actually say that. 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/2018-10/Lisak-False-Reports-Moving-beyond.pdf https://www.nsvrc.org/sites/default/files/publications/2018-...
- suifbwish 5y ago
  This doesn’t seem very scientific. You can’t determine if someone is lying based on them “seeming like an attention seeker or not” deductive reasoning in a legal system demands “beyond a shadow of a doubt” certainty before convictions are made. 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.
  - joshuamorton 5y ago

throwaway0a5e 5y ago

>Less than 1% of rapes lead to felony convictions 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.

chmod600 5y ago

From your source: "...based on the best of the imperfect measures available." What are these imperfect measures? How imperfect are they?

philwelch 5y ago

How are these numbers even measurable? > 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.

elzbardico 5y ago
We should also take into account that this number of false accusations is probably the number where this was clearly determined by the court, probably with legal repercussions for the accuser. The real number probably is higher
lukasb 5y ago
jfengel's comment was all about how the very high bar the criminal justice system sets for arrests/prosecutions/convictions for sexual assault is not the appropriate bar for the community to use to keep itself safe. So the low conviction rate is not helping you here.
- deleted 5y ago

Grieving 5y ago

>2-8% of rape complaints are false 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-charges-lead-to-sex-crime-convictions.html https://blogs.findlaw.com/blotter/2017/07/how-often-do-rape-...

lukasb 5y ago
"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." Not prosecuted != not provable. Not provable != false.
- Grieving 5y ago
  >Not prosecuted != not provable 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.

JamesBarney 5y ago

I think that's 2-8% where there is quite a bit of evidence that the allegations false. Quite a few allegations there isn't evidence either way besides the accounts of the two individuals.