The issue came up again in a related story about anonymity for those acused of rape.

The statistic Harriet Harman bandied about was a conviction rate of 6.3%, but that a percentage of total reported cases, not of cases prosecuted, where actually the conviction rate is 58%.

So the real issue seems to be the prosecution rate, not the conviction rate as that seems to be more or less in line with other crimes. To put some numbers to it, of 100 reported cases of rape, only 11 are taken to court and 6 of those result in a conviction.

So the question is, what is the percentage of reported crimes that result in a conviction?

6% unless I an missing something

I think he means “what is the percentage of ALL reported crimes that result in a conviction” – i.e how does rape compare to the general crime statistics?

Interestingly the news always harp on about conviction rates of rapes, however think about the nature of the case that is being investigated. It’s a hard crime to prove/disprove, it’s pretty much always a case of one word against the other, no independant witnesses, she says he raped me, he says consent (medical confirms sex has taken place). Try being on a jury and trying to get past that reasonable doubt issue.
I strongly believe that anonymity should be granted to all rape defendants until found guilty. The amount of false rape claims is insane, notice they never report the stats of false rapes. Recent case where woman was sentenced to 3 years imprisonment for false rape claim of her ex-boyfriend, who lost his job and because he couldn’t pay rent/mortgage lost his house. Now that is horrific.

Druidh that is what I am asking – thanks for interpreting.

MunqueChick, well that’s a more contentious issue. I think that the stats have been used for a political purpose by the former ‘Women’s Minister’ (can we have a minister for men please as well to represent our particular needs?) and the way that she has used them is very misleading.

I was trying to understand this by establishing a true like for like comparisson, although I think that the prosecution and conviction rates for different categories of crime are unlikely to be homogenous.

As said above, it’s usually very difficult to prove. ‘Stranger rape’ is very rare, it’s usually a partner, ex partner, relative etc.

My mate worked until recently on the sexual crimes team in the Met and he told me that unfortunately a lot of the rape claims come from women who cheat on partners etc, get caught and then claim rape to get out of it but then get sucked in over their heads and then the sh1t hits the fan…. Makes it so much harder for the real cases to succeed.

How do you think those stats would start to look when you consider the percentage of rape victims who never come forward and report that crime, relative to the percentage of victims of other crimes?

MunqueChick’s argument about the difficulty of proving rape is probably a big factor in the under reporting in the first place, and that’s not even considering the social stigma involved for the victims.

a sorry a bit tired here.