Quite frequently the issue of low rape conviction rates crops up in the papers, the article below being typical (though not particularly recent) in its condemnation of this obvious 'problem'. I blog this now because of the big "hear, hear" due Mr Curnow, whose letter to the Guardian I also print below, and whose statement seems to me to be the most obvious common sense.
Rape conviction rates remain near record low
guardian.co.uk,
Friday July 20 2007
Rape conviction rates remain close to an all-time low despite efforts by the government, police and prosecutors to improve performance, according to Home Office research published today. The study into attrition rates for rape cases sampled 676 complaints from 2003-4 and found that 6% resulted in an offender being convicted. The report said the conviction rate in England and Wales rose to 13% when taking into account lesser offences such as indecent assault. But in rape cases there was virtually no change from the record low conviction rate of 5.5% reported two years ago by the Home Office. That compares to conviction rates of up to 32% in the 1970s.
-------------
Guardian Letters 05/03/08
It's not surprising conviction rates for rape are low. The nature of the offence means trials are often a case of one person's word against another's. Physical evidence is rarely conclusive in establishing the absence of consent, which is the key issue. Under such circumstances, the requirement that the prosecution prove its case beyond reasonable doubt tends to produce a high acquittal rate.
Trevor Curnow
University of Cumbria
10 comments:
I find this fascinating. It turns out that for all offences, the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority has had the right to reduce compensation if the victim was drunk, if it is deemed that alcohol "contributed to the circumstances that gave rise to the injury".
It has now been decided that only in the case of rape that this will not be allowed to happen. In other words, for only one crime, rape, the inebriation or otherwise of the victim can in NO WAY be deemed to contribute to the circumstances that gave rise to the injury.
It is not clear to me why rape should be singled out in this way. If it is thought to be a more serious crime than others, the compensation should be correspondingly higher, but you could still retain a differential between the (very high) compensation for a drunk rape victim and the (enormously high) compensation for a sober one.
This logic is not being applied to say, robbery, and I wonder what the moral difference is. Robbing someone is ALWAYS wrong, ALWAYS a crime, no matter whether the victim is drunk or not. But if you get irresponsibly pissed and start waving your wad of banknotes around in a rough pub shouting "I'm richer than you, you pikey gits", then there is a strong argument for saying your behaviour contributed to the circumstances of the crime, and your compensation should be less.
Rape is also ALWAYS wrong, ALWAYS a crime, no matter whether the victim is drunk or not. But why then should it, alone of all crimes, be treated any differently? Is it really the case that no behaviour of the victim can possibly even contribute to the circs of this very serious crime?
---------
Rape victims awarded less compensation for drinking before attack
Telegraph
12 Aug 2008
More than a dozen rape victims were awarded lower levels of compensation for their ordeals because they had been drinking before they were attacked, it has emerged.
The Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority (CICA) has since rowed back on the policy, which saw 14 victims - around one per cent of rape-related applications - told they would get less compensation because alcohol was involved. The policy came about because of a clause in CICA guidelines that awards for all types of injury can be cut if alcohol consumption "contributed to the circumstances that gave rise to the injury".
One victim who saw her compensation cut believes her drink was spiked before she was raped by a stranger after a night out four years ago, aged 25. Helen, a beauty therapist, admitted she was drinking before the attack. Police said it was "possible" her behaviour had contributed to the incident because she had drunk a "large amount" of alcohol.
She said it felt like a "slap in the face" when she received a letter to say her award of £11,000 had been docked by 25 per cent to £8,250 for that reason. The letter said: "The evidence we have is that your excessive consumption of alcohol was a contributing factor in the incident."
"It felt like I was being punished for having the audacity to step up and say: 'I don't think this should have happened to me'," she said. "It was like going back to the 70s, saying: 'She was asking for it'. How else could you read the letter but as saying it's my fault I was raped? "Which 25 per cent did they think I was responsible for?"
Helen and her lawyer successfully challenged the decision, and have appealed to other victims to do the same.
A Metropolitan Police constable received a written warning for their handling of the case after a complaint by Helen in 2005 led to an internal investigation that found a string of failings had occurred. A detective constable, who has transferred to another force, received "advice". The CICA said it made such decisions "in good faith" based on the facts available. It said a mistake had been made in Helen's case and its policy was not to reduce awards to rape victims on the basis of alcohol consumption.
Peter Hitchens commenting on reduced compensation for rape when victims were drunk:
"How the Left censored the blindingly obvious truth about rape
Women who get drunk are more likely to be raped than women who do not get drunk. No, this does not excuse rape.
Men who take advantage of women by raping them, drunk or sober, should be severely punished for this wicked, treacherous action, however stupid the victim may have been. But it does mean that a rape victim who was drunk deserves less sympathy.
Simple, isn’t it? You can hate rape and want it punished, while still recognising that a woman who, say, goes back to a man’s home after several Bacardi Breezers was being a bit dim.
Drunken_people Yet a wave of hysterical ultra-feminist propaganda has this week forced a State agency to reverse a perfectly sensible decision to cut compensation to rape victims who were drunk.
Personally, I’m not sure where all this ‘compensation’ came from. It used to be grudgingly paid out. Now it flows in tens of millions (£200million last year) from the taxpayers’ pockets into the hands of the wronged.
I suspect it is the result of the almost total failure of the criminal justice system to prevent crime, catch culprits or punish them when caught. Instead of offering justice, the state provides a cheque.
So I suppose we must resign ourselves to the fact that a growing slice of our taxes will be handed over to victims of unsolved rapes, while rape itself increases – the inevitable result of the collapse of sexual morality.
But I cannot see why women who ignore the wisdom of the ages, and make themselves more likely to be victims by drinking too much, should get the same size cheque as women who are raped despite acting responsibly.
Someone called Bridget Prentice, a one-time teacher who now has the banana republic title of Justice Minister, actually said last week that ‘a victim of rape is not in any way culpable due to alcohol consumption’.
This is flatly untrue and she must know it is. Of course she is culpable, just as she would be culpable if she crashed a car and injured someone while drunk, or stepped out into the traffic while drunk and was run over. Getting drunk is not something that happens to you. It is something you do.
Nor is being drunk – which makes you miss danger signals, make bad judgments, lose consciousness in unsafe places and then lose your memory, too – comparable with ‘dressing provocatively’ as the feminist thought police would like to pretend.
If women want to dress provocatively, then they should be free to do so, and I say thanks a lot to those who do. Our society is based on self-restraint. We can be provoked and still behave ourselves.
We do not need to compel women to dress like bats, as many Muslim countries do, so as to curb the unchained passions of hot-blooded menfolk.
All the above is a statement of the blindingly obvious. Yet, in the main forums of public opinion, such views are becoming harder and harder to express because of the unreasoning storm of fury that will follow.
The collapse of the Tory party into the arms of Leftism has made this much worse, particularly on the BBC, which no longer feels any duty to give airtime to social and moral conservatives."
Have been musing on this, especially after a (mildly feminist) friend challenged me on exactly HOW being drunk could contribute to rape. Here's where I'm at:
1) There are many cases of accusations of rape where alcohol "plays a part in the circs of the injury".
2) The justice system seeks proof beyond reasonable doubt. To convict in the case of rape, it must prove not only non-consent, but clearly communicated non-consent, beyond reasonable doubt. Alcohol may well cloud this issue and thus prevent many convictions.
3) However, once a conviction has been obtained, it can no longer be relevant whether the victim was drunk or not:
3a) The justice system found she was raped, beyond reasonable doubt.
3b) Therefore she communicated non-consent, even if she was drunk.
3c) Therefore her drunkenness was and is found to be irrelevant.
So drunkenness can contribute to whether it *is* rape, but if you have already decided it is rape, you've taken care of any drunkenness issues.
Further:
* I haven't thought about it deeply, but suspect this logic may well apply across the board to other crimes too, so there is possibly never a case for reducing compensation levels for alcohol. But dunno for sure.
* I still don't see why victims for any crime where they have suffered no financial loss should be compensated financially at all, unless this money comes from the perpetrator and is considered part of the sentence.
I agree with JP here. Compensation is a bit of a non issue for me, either drunkenness contributed in some way or it hadn't (e.g the accussed had misinterpreted signals and non-consent wasn't communicated).
An old article, but still relevant to the discussion:
Rape targets are a violation of justice
Minette Marrin
"In a country such as ours, which values highly the presumption of innocence, it is odd of the government to announce a target for convictions. That, surely, amounts to a presumption of guilt – a presumption that the government knows how many people are guilty of a particular crime and therefore how many people the courts ought to find guilty of it. That’s not only entirely at odds with the essential spirit of English justice. It’s completely unreasonable as well."
[...]
"No doubt this flurry of feel-good intentions was in part a response to a successful speech that David Cameron recently made on the same subject. And on the face of it, it seems tremendously worthy and heart-warming, not to say female-voter friendly. However, it is in fact misleading and unreasonable. Rape is a dreadful crime and it is true that, of the cases reported, only about 5.7% end up with a conviction. But the facts would lead any just and sensible person to dump these self-serving plans for targets and rape starter packs immediately.
At the moment in England and Wales, of the rape allegations that women make to the police only 12% end up in court. Given that 5.7% or so of the reported cases lead to the man being found guilty, that means that 47%, not 5.7%, is the true conviction rate for rape. That sounds entirely different and relative to other crimes it is not low. It is slightly higher than the conviction rate for murder.
If the public had been fed the true conviction figure of 47%, rather than the misleading one of 5.7% or so, people would be feeling much less aggrieved. However, ill-informed grievance is grist to the politician’s mill."
[...]
"As to the question of consent, and particularly consent when drunk, that is yet another can of worms. It is in the nature of many forms of rape that it would take the judgment of Solomon to apportion guilt and blame.
It seems to me that if a woman gets drunk, and is willingly spending time with a man, and appears to consent to sex, then she must in many cases bear some responsibility if sex takes place. It all depends on the details of each story, but women sometimes do give out mixed messages, as any juror will be aware. No amount of distinguished quangocrats and lawyers could dream up a guideline for every possibility."
The plot thickens. Here's the woman at the heart of this story (my italics):
Rape survivor vows to fight on for others
Scotland on Sunday
17 August 2008
Although nobody was charged or convicted for the crime, Helen was entitled to claim compensation for the "psychological injury" of rape, having reported the crime. After the assault, Helen had a nervous breakdown and has not returned to work since.
That's very odd. I had worried that the reduced compensation might be seen to undermine the original guilty verdict for the crime on which the compensation was being claimed. Now it appears, in this case, there was no charge or conviction anyway. That's really weird.
From the aforementioned acquaintance:
I guess they go on the police or CPS view - there are plenty of cases where it's obvious a crime has been committed even if there's not enough to bring charges (if she was discovered naked with violent injuries sobbing on a street and saying she was raped, it would be almost certain she was indeed raped). But if the police failed to catch anyone then I guess she still gets included as a victim. After all, if someone is murdered the family would still be eligible for compensation even if no one was charged with the murder. You don't need a conviction to make the assumption a crime has been committed.
Rod LiddleTelegraph Comment
The Sunday Times
May 17, 2009
Britain has the lowest rate of convictions for rape in Europe and the figure is still falling every year, a new study suggests. This is taken to mean that British juries have a bit of a soft spot for rapists and are increasingly inclined to let them go free, perhaps because our jurors are mad, ignorant, or misogynist, or all three. What the study did not reveal is that the actual number of men convicted of rape has actually stayed pretty much the same, on average, in the past 15 to 20 years – and at a figure which is comparable with most other countries in Europe.
The big change has been a massive (almost twentyfold) increase in allegations of rape and consequent prosecutions which, by the time they reach court, simply do not hold water. The government, led by Harriet Harman, seems to have a perverse wish to prove that more British women are being raped than is the case. It has told the Old Bill that it wants to see more convictions; hence the enormous rise in prosecutions. Isn’t it this politically inspired mania for prosecutions that has resulted in our low conviction rate, rather than the notion that men commit 20 times as many rapes as they did a couple of decades ago?
Harriet Harman attacked in The Times... by my barrister mate, Mike:
Burden of proof in rape cases
Post a Comment