RE: Rokcet Scientist "66% of Claimed Rapes are false"
February 10, 2012 at 12:14 pm
(This post was last modified: February 10, 2012 at 12:44 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
"BJS report NCJ-151658 notes that there are 2 rapes or attempted rapes reported per 1,000 US citizens, which is 530,000 reports of rape per year. There are 15,000 rape convictions annually. Based on new DNA tests, a third of those convictions are now found to be false. Therefore, there are potentially 520,000 false rape allegations a year."
BJS is the Bureau of Justice Statistics, that is their report (from 1993 I believe) and the subsequent conclusions drawn by an armchair analyst. That's 98% right there. Do I buy it? No, because the numbers have been jacked with by failing to account for some pretty important variables. Nevertheless, the claim exists and is based on verifiable data. Errors in statistical analysis are many, most often the problem is not with the numbers but what the analyst decides to do with those numbers, how they decide to interpret them.
One might decide to interpret those same numbers in a much different way. Stating that based on this data, 98% of rape allegations could potentially end in wrongful convictions or no conviction. This puts two groups of people on the shitty end of the stick. Those who are wrongly convicted, and those who (for whatever reason) could not secure a conviction in their case (speaking specifically about legitimate cases). 5,000 of those cases ending in conviction are overturned (so sayeth this analyst) That leaves 515,00 cases that did not end in conviction, of which some would be false allegations and some would be for an assortment of other reasons. Not a pretty picture, a measly 2% of people associated with these cases being the only group we could definitely say had secured justice..
Lets go with someone more reliable shall we (The BJS is reliable, the "analyst" above was not..lol)? 8% is the rate of "unfounded allegations" according to the FBI, but they put alot of qualifiers on that number (and it's from a different year) Still not fantastic, considering that they report the average rate of false accusations for other crimes at 2%. Still shitty, considering the effects of a rape allegation even after it is shown to be false, which is probably what gets men up in arms about this. These are the numbers, and they are covered in caveats, nonetheless, it appears that it's possible that 8 of every 100 rape allegations are cases of false reporting. An advocate might point out that just because a person is not convicted does not mean that they are not guilty, but I'm afraid that this is exactly what it means, unless we're willing to say something along the lines of "I don't care if he wasn't convicted...I know he's guilty". It might be true, but that's not how our justice system works and I doubt that anyone would want our justice system to work that way, including any person who might make such a statement. As you can probably tell, I don't agree with advocates on either side of this issue, as the numbers we have available show that great many people are raped every year, and that a great many people are falsely accused of rape every year.
BJS is the Bureau of Justice Statistics, that is their report (from 1993 I believe) and the subsequent conclusions drawn by an armchair analyst. That's 98% right there. Do I buy it? No, because the numbers have been jacked with by failing to account for some pretty important variables. Nevertheless, the claim exists and is based on verifiable data. Errors in statistical analysis are many, most often the problem is not with the numbers but what the analyst decides to do with those numbers, how they decide to interpret them.
One might decide to interpret those same numbers in a much different way. Stating that based on this data, 98% of rape allegations could potentially end in wrongful convictions or no conviction. This puts two groups of people on the shitty end of the stick. Those who are wrongly convicted, and those who (for whatever reason) could not secure a conviction in their case (speaking specifically about legitimate cases). 5,000 of those cases ending in conviction are overturned (so sayeth this analyst) That leaves 515,00 cases that did not end in conviction, of which some would be false allegations and some would be for an assortment of other reasons. Not a pretty picture, a measly 2% of people associated with these cases being the only group we could definitely say had secured justice..
Lets go with someone more reliable shall we (The BJS is reliable, the "analyst" above was not..lol)? 8% is the rate of "unfounded allegations" according to the FBI, but they put alot of qualifiers on that number (and it's from a different year) Still not fantastic, considering that they report the average rate of false accusations for other crimes at 2%. Still shitty, considering the effects of a rape allegation even after it is shown to be false, which is probably what gets men up in arms about this. These are the numbers, and they are covered in caveats, nonetheless, it appears that it's possible that 8 of every 100 rape allegations are cases of false reporting. An advocate might point out that just because a person is not convicted does not mean that they are not guilty, but I'm afraid that this is exactly what it means, unless we're willing to say something along the lines of "I don't care if he wasn't convicted...I know he's guilty". It might be true, but that's not how our justice system works and I doubt that anyone would want our justice system to work that way, including any person who might make such a statement. As you can probably tell, I don't agree with advocates on either side of this issue, as the numbers we have available show that great many people are raped every year, and that a great many people are falsely accused of rape every year.
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