Once Again The Guardian Fails To Understand Rape And Rape Cases

The Guardian has had the arts graduates sucking their pencils and adding up the statistics about rape in the UK. Predictably they manage to get it all entirely wrong.

[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Just 1.5% of all rape cases lead to charge or summons, data reveals[/perfectpullquote]

Nonsense.

[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Only one in 65 rape cases reported to police result in suspects being summonsed or charged, a Guardian analysis of the latest crime figures has revealed.[/perfectpullquote]

Innumerate malarkey.

[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]The drop is particularly dramatic at a time when victims are reporting more attacks. Four years ago one in seven or 14% of cases led to a suspect being charged or summonsed – a total of 4,908 in 2015-16. Last year fewer than one in 65 reports of rape (1.5%) resulted in a charge or a summons, for a total of only 886 in 2018-19.[/perfectpullquote]

It starts out not as a case but as an allegation. A report even, but not a case.

[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Rebecca Hitchen, campaigns manager at the End Violence Against Women coalition said: “The figures show that overall, of every 200 cases of rape reported to the police, only three will actually be prosecuted and go to trial.[/perfectpullquote]

Nope, it’s not a case of rape when it’s reported to the police. It’s an allegation of such. Some of which will be maliciously false allegations. Best number anyone knows of at present being around 6%.

Some others will not have been rape. We actually only know that it was in fact rape when someone was convicted of it. And this is always going to be true of rape. Simply because the underlying activity, bonking, is entirely legal and many people do it day after day. It’s consent or not which makes the crime of rape. And until the allegation has been examined we just don’t know whether rape has actually occurred, do we?

There’s also this prime piece of nonsense:

More recent allegations have a greater likelihood of as yet being undetermined, not passed through the system yet? Gettaway, no chance!

And the actual complaint they’re really making? Fewer allegations lead to conviction. And this at a time when more allegations are being made. Hmm, well, yes, there’s an explanation there, isn’t there? The cases that previously weren’t reported are likely to be – you know, likely – to have been the marginal cases. Have more marginal cases in the system and the conviction rate will drop, won’t it?

Numeracy, it helps in explaining the world around us. Unlike The Guardian.