It turns out that I thought too much of Dylan Matthews whose post of a rape incidence graphic I responded to yesterday. Turns out Matthews has a history of statistical malfeasance. He is a newly minted Harvard grad though so he has a few more years until he achieves Matt Yglesias status.
I’ll add a couple of more points to the argument. First, the palatability of the information passed around the blogosphere in the form of infographics is a dangerous thing. It’s the blog equivalent to Krispy Creme donuts. Everyone likes them because they’re just so sweet and easy. A lot of energy – good or bad – is packed into one compact morsel.
So you had that graphic which began at a startup feminist organization called The Enliven Project. Matthews considers it a “reputable org”, yet it pretty much was born yesterday, and it has produced no known policy papers and hasn’t been mentioned by any other media outlets or even other feminists until this graphic hit the web.
So let’s go over this. The founder of The Enliven Project is Sarah Beaulieu. Responding to inquiries in her methodology she wrote (this is also what Matthews emailed to me after I asked him for data to back the claim):
Some reports suggest that only 5-25% of rapes are reported to authorities. Other suggest that close to half are reported. We assumed 10%, which is dramatic, but possible.
Assuming that 2% of reported rapes are false and a 10% reporting rate, the graphic assumes that 2 of 1000 rapes are falsely reported (assuming a rape can’t be falsely reported unless it’s reported in the first place)
These are very many assumptions and cherry-picked stats.
Beaulieu admits to choosing a number that is low enough to be considered a “dramatic” estimate of reported rapes. She then cites the percentage of rapes reported from a 1999 study from the National Center for Policy Analysis. From there, to figure out the percentage of rapes that end up as felony charges, she cites a 2006 DOJ study that focused on defendants in large urban counties.
Beaulieu uses the phrase “some reports suggest” and then throws out a low number which sets the table for the bulk of the analysis. The National Institute of Justice found that 36% of rapes are reported to authorities. RAINN, a victim advocacy group, cites a 46% reporting figure which it gleaned from the very same report originally cited by Beaulieu. Which numbers to believe? At the very least, Beaulieu has chosen the most extreme stats that support her claim at every threshold of the process. And, worse, she has been less than honest about the origins of her statistics.
Beaulieu also considers everything reported in victimization surveys as a rape are felonious acts. This is an important point that isn’t discussed very often. Do feminists and other activists think that, say, a man who has sex with a woman who is too drunk to consent should be charged with a felony? Personally, I don’t think that is always a felony. If you could convince me it is a felony, I don’t think it is worth prison time, but feminists might believe that it is. How much prison time does that kind of rape warrant? How many men who are convicted of rape take pleas down to probation and fines? These are tangible punishments based upon the justice system’s available resources.
Feminist activists and their willing pundit poodles don’t have to delve into those details because their followers don’t demand it, and their digital gotchas don’t have room for such nuance anyway.
For her final trick, Beaulieu runs with a 2% false rape accusation figure. She draws this number from the National Center for the Prosecution of Violence Against Women. Even in their seemingly activist cherry-picking, the group repeatedly says in their paper that reliable estimates of false accusation range from 2% to 8%. Beaulieu conveniently chooses the low end. Even then, these figures represent a floor of proven falsities. It is impossible to know how many false rape claims are not proven to be false.
The graphic also misleads by implying that each rape is committed by a different rapist. It explicitly denotes each stickman as an individual “rapist”. Research on this question has found that the majority of rapes are committed by repeat offenders. Lisak and Miller (citing doesn’t mean that I condone every aspect of their methodology) found that among a sample of over 1,800 men, 120 self-reported actions that constituted rape according to the parameters of the study. Those men committed 483 acts of rape. This figures out to 4.025 acts per offender. Applying that statistic, 248 rapists would have committed those 1000 rape acts in Beaulieu’s graphic. Tweaking the assumptions to a 40% reporting rate and an 8% false claim rate, we would find 32 false rape accusations. Compare that to the actual number of rapists, 248. Two versus 1000 has a much different feel than 32 versus 248.
And from there you start thinking about the decision on the part of the woman who is deciding whether or not to report. Feminists assume that every single act that they define as rape is something that should be reported. Rape has elements (repeat: elements; they aren’t the same) of both theft and assault. But very many people decide not to report either of those acts. Feminists would have it that every act which they define as rape would end up in a man serving time in prison. The truth is that feminists are trying to convince women that they should be more pissed off about having experienced rape. That they should decide to report all rapes including ones which are deemed rape due to lack of explicit consent. But in so many other instances we’re told to “trust women” and their decisions. Why stop now?
An American man’s chance of prostate cancer is exactly the same as his chance of being sexually assaulted: 1 out of 6. Among American women, 1 of 8 will be diagnosed with breast cancer; 1 of 4 will be sexually assaulted. Yet in 2011, the Susan G. Komen Foundation spent $492 million on awareness and prevention, five times more than the four largest anti-sexual violence organizations combined.*
Besides the “1 in 4″ myth which has been disproved, the logic behind this passage is telling. Breast cancer is not a crime. There is much more need for private organizations to donate money to fight the disease. The boundaries are also much clearer. But in the U.S. we do have resources to fight crime, including rape. It is erroneous to think of fighting rape in terms of how much money private organizations donate to the cause. And it would be almost impossible to determine how much taxpayer money goes to directly and indirectly investigating, prosecuting, and thwarting rape via the justice system, police agencies, and within social, family, and community networks.
Very well done, Mr. Piggy! I expect Jezebel to just shut down its site in embarassment and Mr. Matthews to have to attend some remedial journalism classes at a directional state school.
Having slept on this, allow me some fresh reasoning. The chart declares the block of men reported as rapists despite not having even gone to trial, much less found guilty.
Of this group you’d have to consider most of them falsely accused. Of the next group that went to trial you’d have to consider all that were found not guilty to have been falsely accused.
Of the ones jailed certainly some small percentage are wrongly convicted.
You eliminate almost all false rape accusations by assuming that everyone reported is guilty regardless if there is grounds for prosecution, or if it actually goes to trial and they are found not guilty. How in that scenario is there ever a false accusation?
All of the reported rapes, but never prosecuted, and the tried, but no conviction, could have been false accusations. We don’t know. As far as all the unreported rapes, we have no idea where that information is coming from, so I don’t even want to attempt to understand it.
we already know everything they say is a lie. millions have read this lie graph, and maybe a thousand (if that) have read your “takedown”, who mostly already know not to trust anything feminists say. what’s the point. anything that a feminist puts out is automatically a lie, period.
Where are they getting the data on rapes that dont go reported? Are they just checking off every single call that goes to a rape crisis hotline? That seems more realistic. Many calls to those hotlines are of the regret nature, especially if in a college town or city. The most common statements on those calls is “I’m not sure what I did” and “I’m not happy with what we did”. Many of those callers never press charges or go to the police, but many of those callers are just expressing regret and feeling ashamed.
A Swedish newspaper published an article about all reported sex crimes in a Swedish county. A lot of the reported crimes that were never charged were never charged because what the woman reported does not constitute a crime or because the woman had such weak recollection of what she did that night, that the police had no leads at all. This means that the unreported rapes must be proportional to a much smaller part of the reported rapes.
If nobody has to be identified to be falsely accused, the number is therefore much higher, if “does not constitute crime” and “can’t remember what happened and with whom” is included.
one wonders why only 30% of “reported rapes” go to court? Could it be that the cases are so weak that 70% don’t pass the BS filter? and only 1 case in 3 that go to trial are found guilty… considering how much positive press rape prosecutions give DA’s you know they put a disproportionate amount of time and effort into them. so if ALL cases were “reported”, you figure 70% of those wouldn’t cut it merit wise for a court case… it seems highly likely that the reason they don’t make it to court is due to false accusations, not some hidden patriarchy that isnt there when you look at it case by case.
Besides. the ones who don’t “report”, don’t because they were all abducted and violated by ET’s, prove me wrong.
So they should have made 20 men black colored. While that is a low estimate, even 20 might convince people that some consideration should be given to these men.
the lit on false rape accusations is based on the number of reported rapes. so it works off of the reported figure which is why Beaulieu’s lowballing of the reported number is so important. She chooses 10% instead of the 40% which many other feminist organizations (and the DOJ) cite. She scales down every step of the way because it provides the most shocking graphic.
Another very important point to keep in mind: roughly 95% of the people convicted of a crime agreed to a plea bargain,while only 5% face trial. You hint at that point above, but just wanted to highlight it. It looks like she is only counting people who were convicted in a jury trial, but excluding those who made a plea agreement. Some portion of those may avoid jail time, but most would. It is frequently a matter of facing 20 to life in prison vs. doing 5-10 years in a state prison with people convicted of violent crimes.
yeah, at some point i’d like to delve into the nature of how the justice system handles these cases. seems like attorneys and prosecutors could weigh in, but they’re too busy actually working as opposed to us bloggers who sit around and speculate about the fine points of the justice system.
i think my position is superior compared to the feminist position because i acknowledge that the system could *never* convert every rape incident into a prison sentence. that is the nature of progressivism, though – to perfect the imperfectable.
Basically, the easier you make it to convict rapists the more non-rapists will be convicted. Our justice system depends on setting the bar at a level that convicts as many true rapists as possible but keeps all or almost all non-rapists out of jail.
to Chuck’s point about the prosecutors and attorneys comments……..I don’t collect legal evidence, but I do collect acute medical evidence after purported rapes. I’ve done this 30-40 times and only once had useful information for the legal system. The woman’s vagina had grass and dirt within. The medical collection of evidence portion is mostly worthless as evidence because it is still a she said/he question of consent. Another exception is the age of the girl; some have been 12-15 in age, which implys lack of consent.
Thanks for the observation about rapists being repeat offenders. That certainly does put the graphic in a different light and I didn’t know that.
Also I was left thinking that only the face trial/jail time and falsely accused stats actually are important.
What does it mean for a “rape to be reported”? There could be an enormous number of false accusations in that collection that the police simply dismiss as not rape at all, that belong in the “False accusation” bundle except for the fact that the police dismiss it out of hand due to lack of evidence.
Not all of them certainly, but clearly “falsely accused” is only going to be comparable to the face trial or jailed box not the whole collection of cases.
Are falsely accused statistics only a collection of statistics of people who were falsely charged with sexual assault and then went to prison or a collection of all reported cases that were later shown to be demonstrably false? I’m guessing a whole pile of false accusations are simply dismissed out of hand as fabrications and may not make it into the statistics.
But data is a tricky thing and easily subject to massage to make the point you want to make, even if the point is misleading.
I always wonder what the people who read the debunkings think. Will Marcotte just read your article and scream “Patriarchy!!!!” and then go back to screaming rape at the taxi driver who asked her to pay for her ride? Or scream sexual abuse at the Starbucks guy who put too much foam on her latte? All the while looking scared at the word because she’s totally been raped at least 9000 times in her life.
Federal and state stats overstate the number of actual rapes, very likely by a large margin. When a rape is reported, but later found to have no evidence or to be a lie, it is not removed from the “reported rapes” database. Then when feminists “adjust” that number by a pulled out of their ass multiplier the error is compounded.
As a matter of consistency in presentation the falsely accused figures in the graphic should be grouped in with the Reported subset. After all, the figures for false reports aren’t coming out of some statistical extrapolation but from official reports.
For the sake of argument and in the interest of being sporting let’s accept the figures presented (with my correction above) and draw some conclusions that this misrepresentation of data could suggest.
First, let’s assume that all of the presented rapists did in fact commit an act that would fall under the legal definition of rape (only applies to this conclusion). That means only 10 % of women who are raped even bother to report that it happens. There’s a term that could be applied to such an act, a nuisance. Yes it’s technically illegal, but looking at the chart it doesn’t seem to bother that many people to the point that they would actually complain about it.
Second, moving onto the set of official reports. As a whole looking at the data set and the results we can conclude that while 10% of all complaints are confirmed to be true 2% are confirmed to be false. Therefore as far as proven data for every 5 people confirmed to have committed a rape there is 1 person who has been confirmed to have been falsely accused.
Third, for all of the plaintiffs who report a rape only 30% are able to provide enough evidence to convince the police to suggest a charge and a district attorney to pursue the case in court. Of those only a third are able to supply enough evidence to convince 12 people that a crime actually occurred. Since we have a presumption of innocence in our legal system we are left with the conclusion that the amount of people falsely accused of rape must lie somewhere within the range of 2-90% of all people accused.
Looking at their numbers this seems like a lot of self-imposed hysteria more than anything else.
@anonymous at 10:52,
twice above, you phrased, “supply enough evidence”. How does one “supply enough evidence” for lack of consent? Witnesses? Bruise on face? Strangers? The burden for “supply enough evidence” is on the victim, and there almost always is no evidence.
@jz
First: satire, look it up. I was merely drawing conclusions that could be inferred by taking the chart at face value. Secondly, the burden of proof is on the plaintiff as a safeguard for the accused. The threshold of determining how much evidence would be necessary to proceed to each various step in the criminal justice system is at the discretion of the police, DA, and jurors. I would hesitate to speculate what that would absolutely entail for each individual. However, the possible evidence you provided would be a good start if not wholly adequate depending on the circumstances. Your protestation seems to suggest that you believe that this shouldn’t be the case. That the word of a self identified victim should be evidence enough. This chart exists to marginalize the existence, potential frequency, and human value of people who have been falsely accused of rape. If you pay close attention to the chart a question may occur to you. If the two figures shaded in black were falsely accused, why are they still included under the heading Rapists?
Could I ask you a couple of questions. Speaking of rape, you complain about “supply enough evidence” and it is reasonably asked, why not supply evidence? A mere accusation is not proof of rape, and given you will be imprisoning someone, surely it is reasonable to expect more than a simple accusation.
Also in terms of evidence, could you elaborate on what you consider “rape”? Is a women who drinks a bit (drunk but not falling unconscious just impaired judgement) and has consensual sex with some a victim of “rape” if she decides in the morning that she regrets the “encounter”? I am sure such encounters leave no marks and little and at best ambiguous evidence, but at the same time, it doesn’t seem that “buyers remorse” is an act of rape.
Or do you hold a more traditional definition, where the threat of violence, or actual violence, is used to force compliance? Or drugs, or some such, at any rate something that will be readily detectable or observable after the fact when the crime is reported.
I fear that you would actually endorse the idea that a woman can withdraw consent afterwards given some flimsy pretext. Which seems to be where the law is heading and this is insane.
@Jason,
If a woman is intoxicated with impaired judgement, is it morally acceptable –to steal her purse? –to kick her in the face? –to rape her?
If a man is intoxicated with impaired judgement, is it morally acceptable –to steal his wallet? –to kick him in the face? — to sodomized him?
that’s the difference between theft and robbery. our legal system – and, i think, most individuals – differentiate between those two crimes. we generally have a stronger reaction to robbery than we do to theft, though the same item can be taken.
to say it another way, a person will (rightly) face a harsher sentence for sticking a gun in a clerk’s face and then stealing his money versus using fists to coerce the money versus stealing the money when he’s in the back of the store mopping the floor.
and honestly, the entire discussion over whether these acts are rape or not rape are too narrow. these are fluid behaviors. compartmentalizing them takes away too much meaning. the question should be, what are the punishments that are due these various behaviors. and let’s not just call them crimes. when you’re within the legal system, then it is proper to talk about whether or not something is a crime, per se. but when we’re thinking academically about these behaviors, what kind of response does sex with a non-consenting drunk woman require from the girl, her family, and society? how much condemnation does the culprit deserve? just calling someone a bad name or being a jerk in publish deserves some sort of condemnation. maybe it’s just a scowl from bystanders. what kind of response does that intercourse with a drunk woman deserve? i don’t think it deserves prison as would a violent rape. it deserves some sort of response though.
Good question: what kind of response does having sex with a drunk deserve?
there is some point at which an intoxicated person is unable to consent. How does the law treat acutely manic people who sign contracts?
Interesting, I don’t think you have thought your position through properly.
I would argue that unless the person (man or woman) is unconscious then if they consent to sex while intoxicated they are not being coerced, end of story. Is it morally questionable to take advantage of someone who is drunk for the purposes of sex? Sure, not really arguing that point, but it isn’t a crime to take advantage of someone who has willingly chosen to put themselves into a situation where they will make foolish decisions
But if we take seriously your assertion that a woman who is heavily intoxicated (but not unconscious) is unable to consent to sex then we need to radically change the law. It needs to immediately become a serious crimes, essentially facilitating a woman’s rape, to supply a woman with alcohol because the consumption of alcohol will render her unable to make rational decisions or consent to actions that she might consent to in that case. Given there is no reasonable way to determine how intoxicated a woman is, supply of alcohol to any woman should be a crime.
I’m not sure you have really thought that through, but that is the logical conclusion to draw from the idea that an intoxicated woman cannot legally consent to sex. Although I would ask, if a woman can’t be trusted to drink responsibility and take responsibility for her choices, then how is she different from a child?
Also you didn’t address my earlier question. Is it rape if a woman chooses to withdraw consent after the act? Or is that simply buyers remorse?
Also I didn’t miss that at no point did you suggest that a man who consents to sex while intoxicated is entitled to claim that they have been raped after the fact. Why not?
Another thought, your theft and robbery analogy is no good. Theft and robbery by definition involve a lack of consent and at least in the case of robbery involve the use or threat of force.
But we are talking about a woman who while drunk willingly consents to sex, even if she would not have willingly consented to sex when sober.
It was a nice try, but it is irrelevant, the two things are not comparable because nobody is initiating sex via the use or threat of force. At worst they are simply taking advantage of someones impaired state. Boorish and uncouth certainly, also certainly immoral, but no force has been used so don’t compare it to cases that explicitly use force to accomplish their end.
Also I don’t think an appeal to fraud will work either as the beer goggles were applied willingly.
The point in law where a person can’t usually consent when intoxicated would be when they are unconscious. Unless they have been deliberately and unwittingly drugged a drunk person has chosen to become impaired and their responsibility for their state cannot be ignored.
@jason,
Is it morally acceptable to sell an acutely manic man a pricey sports car? He willingly chose not to take his lithium and Depakote.
Is it morally acceptable to give a depressed, crying, intoxicated man the gun he’s asking for? He willingly drank the alcohol.
@jason,
Is it morally acceptable to take the money an intoxicated man is throwing around the bar? He willingly drank the alcohol.
Is it morally acceptable to sodomize an intoxicated man? He willingly drank the alcohol.
Actually it is legal to take the money given away freely by the drunk who does so without coercion, it is perfectly legal to sodomize a drunk man who willingly consents to it. Same with a drunk woman.
There is no force or threat of force in any of the examples. Is it moral? No I don’t think so, but the point is that there isn’t a crime being committed in any of these cases.
I am actually acutely bothered that you can’t actually get this through your head. None of this is rocket science. If a person willingly intoxicates themselves and then _freely_ chooses to do something stupid they are responsible for the consequences of those choices. Why do you seek to treat people like children? Why do you seek to absolve people of personal responsibility?
You can cite all the examples you like, but any action that is freely chosen while intoxicated is the responsibility of the person who freely chose to get into a state of intoxication.
Will people take advantage of their poor choice? Probably. Is that a good thing? No, but why do you wish to so desperately absolve people from the consequences of their own free choices?
Do you just like to control the lives of others? Or did you do something &*$&#@* stupid that you regret and by seeking to shift the blame from others you think you can somehow shift your own culpability for whatever idiotic act you chose.
BTW, if we take this brain dead reasoning you are offering seriously, you can’t actually prosecute people for drink driving as they are not responsible for actions they take while intoxicated according to you.
@jason,
do you understand the difference between moral accountability and a law?
do you understand the difference between an analogy used to teach or enlighten, and attempted use of an analogy to win an argument?
do you understand that all analogies are incomplete?
I haven`t read the whole post so you might have covered it but a huge percentage of reported rapes are categorized by the police as unfounded which means something along the lines of the incident reported by the woman does not meet the legal definition of rape even if what she says is true. So they are not false accusations but they are not rapes either and they make up an enormous amount of the reported rapes. Considering that such a large percentage of reported rapes does not meet the legal definition of rape an equal or probably much higher proportion of the women reporting in studies to have been raped but not having reported it is highly likely.
Yes I do understand the difference between moral accountability and the law. Do you? Are you sure?
Of course all analogies are incomplete. That is why they are analogies and not isomorphic cases. The problem you have is that for an analogy to work the relevant portions of the question need to be the same. The problem with your analogy to robbery or theft is that robbery requires the use of force or the threat of force. Any analogy you try to draw that attempts to use an example that requires the use of force or the threat of force is invalid because there is an explicit assumption that no force is used on the person who is inebriated.
You then tried an analogy using manic individuals, but that is also invalid because again, the relevant parts that need to be analogues are not present. There is no force in such an example, but you are dealing with a mentally ill person who has no control over their state. That is the equivalent of having sex with a women that you have deliberately drugged to make her compliant. But in the case of inebriation the person has willingly consented to get into this state.
You used theft as an example, but that is also not sufficiently analogous because it involves the taking of a persons property while they are not present.
You want to talk as if the person who has intentionally chosen to drink is absolved of all responsibility while they are inebriated. That the woman who has sex with a man, or a person who gets behind the wheel while drunk, is not responsible for their behavior and that somehow absolves them of responsibility for the choices they made. It doesn’t, they are responsible for the decisions they make in a state they have deliberately chosen to get into.
Does it make it right to take advantage of their state? As I said, no. But if people are going to choose to be get heavily intoxicated they shouldn’t be surprised if they chose to do something they regret and they bear the responsibility for choices freely chosen when drunk.
As I said at the outset, it might be boorish, or poor form to have a hookup with a drunk woman but unless she is unconscious, she is choosing her course of action freely, so no crime is committed.
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Very well done, Mr. Piggy! I expect Jezebel to just shut down its site in embarassment and Mr. Matthews to have to attend some remedial journalism classes at a directional state school.
Having slept on this, allow me some fresh reasoning. The chart declares the block of men reported as rapists despite not having even gone to trial, much less found guilty.
Of this group you’d have to consider most of them falsely accused. Of the next group that went to trial you’d have to consider all that were found not guilty to have been falsely accused.
Of the ones jailed certainly some small percentage are wrongly convicted.
You eliminate almost all false rape accusations by assuming that everyone reported is guilty regardless if there is grounds for prosecution, or if it actually goes to trial and they are found not guilty. How in that scenario is there ever a false accusation?
It’s posts like these that make me wish you had a tip jar so I could send you money. Great work.
I’m wondering if false accusation refers to cases where the woman wasn’t anywhere near the accused man at the alleged time of the rape.
All of the reported rapes, but never prosecuted, and the tried, but no conviction, could have been false accusations. We don’t know. As far as all the unreported rapes, we have no idea where that information is coming from, so I don’t even want to attempt to understand it.
we already know everything they say is a lie. millions have read this lie graph, and maybe a thousand (if that) have read your “takedown”, who mostly already know not to trust anything feminists say. what’s the point. anything that a feminist puts out is automatically a lie, period.
Where are they getting the data on rapes that dont go reported? Are they just checking off every single call that goes to a rape crisis hotline? That seems more realistic. Many calls to those hotlines are of the regret nature, especially if in a college town or city. The most common statements on those calls is “I’m not sure what I did” and “I’m not happy with what we did”. Many of those callers never press charges or go to the police, but many of those callers are just expressing regret and feeling ashamed.
A useful graphic would include a color representing “uncertainty”. “Uncertainty” would be the predominant color.
A Swedish newspaper published an article about all reported sex crimes in a Swedish county. A lot of the reported crimes that were never charged were never charged because what the woman reported does not constitute a crime or because the woman had such weak recollection of what she did that night, that the police had no leads at all. This means that the unreported rapes must be proportional to a much smaller part of the reported rapes.
If nobody has to be identified to be falsely accused, the number is therefore much higher, if “does not constitute crime” and “can’t remember what happened and with whom” is included.
one wonders why only 30% of “reported rapes” go to court? Could it be that the cases are so weak that 70% don’t pass the BS filter? and only 1 case in 3 that go to trial are found guilty… considering how much positive press rape prosecutions give DA’s you know they put a disproportionate amount of time and effort into them. so if ALL cases were “reported”, you figure 70% of those wouldn’t cut it merit wise for a court case… it seems highly likely that the reason they don’t make it to court is due to false accusations, not some hidden patriarchy that isnt there when you look at it case by case.
Besides. the ones who don’t “report”, don’t because they were all abducted and violated by ET’s, prove me wrong.
They didn’t go with 2% for false rape accusations. They went with 0.2%.
There are 2 men highlighted out of 1000 (50 columns by 20 rows)
So they should have made 20 men black colored. While that is a low estimate, even 20 might convince people that some consideration should be given to these men.
dejour,
the lit on false rape accusations is based on the number of reported rapes. so it works off of the reported figure which is why Beaulieu’s lowballing of the reported number is so important. She chooses 10% instead of the 40% which many other feminist organizations (and the DOJ) cite. She scales down every step of the way because it provides the most shocking graphic.
Another very important point to keep in mind: roughly 95% of the people convicted of a crime agreed to a plea bargain,while only 5% face trial. You hint at that point above, but just wanted to highlight it. It looks like she is only counting people who were convicted in a jury trial, but excluding those who made a plea agreement. Some portion of those may avoid jail time, but most would. It is frequently a matter of facing 20 to life in prison vs. doing 5-10 years in a state prison with people convicted of violent crimes.
@CR OK – thanks.
great gatsby,
yeah, at some point i’d like to delve into the nature of how the justice system handles these cases. seems like attorneys and prosecutors could weigh in, but they’re too busy actually working as opposed to us bloggers who sit around and speculate about the fine points of the justice system.
i think my position is superior compared to the feminist position because i acknowledge that the system could *never* convert every rape incident into a prison sentence. that is the nature of progressivism, though – to perfect the imperfectable.
Signal detection theory seems relevant here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detection_theory
Basically, the easier you make it to convict rapists the more non-rapists will be convicted. Our justice system depends on setting the bar at a level that convicts as many true rapists as possible but keeps all or almost all non-rapists out of jail.
to Chuck’s point about the prosecutors and attorneys comments……..I don’t collect legal evidence, but I do collect acute medical evidence after purported rapes. I’ve done this 30-40 times and only once had useful information for the legal system. The woman’s vagina had grass and dirt within. The medical collection of evidence portion is mostly worthless as evidence because it is still a she said/he question of consent. Another exception is the age of the girl; some have been 12-15 in age, which implys lack of consent.
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Thanks for the observation about rapists being repeat offenders. That certainly does put the graphic in a different light and I didn’t know that.
Also I was left thinking that only the face trial/jail time and falsely accused stats actually are important.
What does it mean for a “rape to be reported”? There could be an enormous number of false accusations in that collection that the police simply dismiss as not rape at all, that belong in the “False accusation” bundle except for the fact that the police dismiss it out of hand due to lack of evidence.
Not all of them certainly, but clearly “falsely accused” is only going to be comparable to the face trial or jailed box not the whole collection of cases.
Are falsely accused statistics only a collection of statistics of people who were falsely charged with sexual assault and then went to prison or a collection of all reported cases that were later shown to be demonstrably false? I’m guessing a whole pile of false accusations are simply dismissed out of hand as fabrications and may not make it into the statistics.
But data is a tricky thing and easily subject to massage to make the point you want to make, even if the point is misleading.
I always wonder what the people who read the debunkings think. Will Marcotte just read your article and scream “Patriarchy!!!!” and then go back to screaming rape at the taxi driver who asked her to pay for her ride? Or scream sexual abuse at the Starbucks guy who put too much foam on her latte? All the while looking scared at the word because she’s totally been raped at least 9000 times in her life.
Federal and state stats overstate the number of actual rapes, very likely by a large margin. When a rape is reported, but later found to have no evidence or to be a lie, it is not removed from the “reported rapes” database. Then when feminists “adjust” that number by a pulled out of their ass multiplier the error is compounded.
Reblogged this on unsolicitedcomment.
As a matter of consistency in presentation the falsely accused figures in the graphic should be grouped in with the Reported subset. After all, the figures for false reports aren’t coming out of some statistical extrapolation but from official reports.
For the sake of argument and in the interest of being sporting let’s accept the figures presented (with my correction above) and draw some conclusions that this misrepresentation of data could suggest.
First, let’s assume that all of the presented rapists did in fact commit an act that would fall under the legal definition of rape (only applies to this conclusion). That means only 10 % of women who are raped even bother to report that it happens. There’s a term that could be applied to such an act, a nuisance. Yes it’s technically illegal, but looking at the chart it doesn’t seem to bother that many people to the point that they would actually complain about it.
Second, moving onto the set of official reports. As a whole looking at the data set and the results we can conclude that while 10% of all complaints are confirmed to be true 2% are confirmed to be false. Therefore as far as proven data for every 5 people confirmed to have committed a rape there is 1 person who has been confirmed to have been falsely accused.
Third, for all of the plaintiffs who report a rape only 30% are able to provide enough evidence to convince the police to suggest a charge and a district attorney to pursue the case in court. Of those only a third are able to supply enough evidence to convince 12 people that a crime actually occurred. Since we have a presumption of innocence in our legal system we are left with the conclusion that the amount of people falsely accused of rape must lie somewhere within the range of 2-90% of all people accused.
Looking at their numbers this seems like a lot of self-imposed hysteria more than anything else.
@anonymous at 10:52,
twice above, you phrased, “supply enough evidence”. How does one “supply enough evidence” for lack of consent? Witnesses? Bruise on face? Strangers? The burden for “supply enough evidence” is on the victim, and there almost always is no evidence.
@jz
First: satire, look it up. I was merely drawing conclusions that could be inferred by taking the chart at face value. Secondly, the burden of proof is on the plaintiff as a safeguard for the accused. The threshold of determining how much evidence would be necessary to proceed to each various step in the criminal justice system is at the discretion of the police, DA, and jurors. I would hesitate to speculate what that would absolutely entail for each individual. However, the possible evidence you provided would be a good start if not wholly adequate depending on the circumstances. Your protestation seems to suggest that you believe that this shouldn’t be the case. That the word of a self identified victim should be evidence enough. This chart exists to marginalize the existence, potential frequency, and human value of people who have been falsely accused of rape. If you pay close attention to the chart a question may occur to you. If the two figures shaded in black were falsely accused, why are they still included under the heading Rapists?
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@jz,
Could I ask you a couple of questions. Speaking of rape, you complain about “supply enough evidence” and it is reasonably asked, why not supply evidence? A mere accusation is not proof of rape, and given you will be imprisoning someone, surely it is reasonable to expect more than a simple accusation.
Also in terms of evidence, could you elaborate on what you consider “rape”? Is a women who drinks a bit (drunk but not falling unconscious just impaired judgement) and has consensual sex with some a victim of “rape” if she decides in the morning that she regrets the “encounter”? I am sure such encounters leave no marks and little and at best ambiguous evidence, but at the same time, it doesn’t seem that “buyers remorse” is an act of rape.
Or do you hold a more traditional definition, where the threat of violence, or actual violence, is used to force compliance? Or drugs, or some such, at any rate something that will be readily detectable or observable after the fact when the crime is reported.
I fear that you would actually endorse the idea that a woman can withdraw consent afterwards given some flimsy pretext. Which seems to be where the law is heading and this is insane.
And yes, please learn what satire is.
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@Jason,
If a woman is intoxicated with impaired judgement, is it morally acceptable –to steal her purse? –to kick her in the face? –to rape her?
If a man is intoxicated with impaired judgement, is it morally acceptable –to steal his wallet? –to kick him in the face? — to sodomized him?
jz,
that’s the difference between theft and robbery. our legal system – and, i think, most individuals – differentiate between those two crimes. we generally have a stronger reaction to robbery than we do to theft, though the same item can be taken.
to say it another way, a person will (rightly) face a harsher sentence for sticking a gun in a clerk’s face and then stealing his money versus using fists to coerce the money versus stealing the money when he’s in the back of the store mopping the floor.
and honestly, the entire discussion over whether these acts are rape or not rape are too narrow. these are fluid behaviors. compartmentalizing them takes away too much meaning. the question should be, what are the punishments that are due these various behaviors. and let’s not just call them crimes. when you’re within the legal system, then it is proper to talk about whether or not something is a crime, per se. but when we’re thinking academically about these behaviors, what kind of response does sex with a non-consenting drunk woman require from the girl, her family, and society? how much condemnation does the culprit deserve? just calling someone a bad name or being a jerk in publish deserves some sort of condemnation. maybe it’s just a scowl from bystanders. what kind of response does that intercourse with a drunk woman deserve? i don’t think it deserves prison as would a violent rape. it deserves some sort of response though.
@CR,
what is the difference between theft and robbery?
to repeat my point: rape is a crime of impunity because the question of consent is almost always she said/he said.
Good question: what kind of response does having sex with a drunk deserve?
there is some point at which an intoxicated person is unable to consent. How does the law treat acutely manic people who sign contracts?
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@jz,
Interesting, I don’t think you have thought your position through properly.
I would argue that unless the person (man or woman) is unconscious then if they consent to sex while intoxicated they are not being coerced, end of story. Is it morally questionable to take advantage of someone who is drunk for the purposes of sex? Sure, not really arguing that point, but it isn’t a crime to take advantage of someone who has willingly chosen to put themselves into a situation where they will make foolish decisions
But if we take seriously your assertion that a woman who is heavily intoxicated (but not unconscious) is unable to consent to sex then we need to radically change the law. It needs to immediately become a serious crimes, essentially facilitating a woman’s rape, to supply a woman with alcohol because the consumption of alcohol will render her unable to make rational decisions or consent to actions that she might consent to in that case. Given there is no reasonable way to determine how intoxicated a woman is, supply of alcohol to any woman should be a crime.
I’m not sure you have really thought that through, but that is the logical conclusion to draw from the idea that an intoxicated woman cannot legally consent to sex. Although I would ask, if a woman can’t be trusted to drink responsibility and take responsibility for her choices, then how is she different from a child?
Also you didn’t address my earlier question. Is it rape if a woman chooses to withdraw consent after the act? Or is that simply buyers remorse?
Also I didn’t miss that at no point did you suggest that a man who consents to sex while intoxicated is entitled to claim that they have been raped after the fact. Why not?
@jz and others,
Another thought, your theft and robbery analogy is no good. Theft and robbery by definition involve a lack of consent and at least in the case of robbery involve the use or threat of force.
But we are talking about a woman who while drunk willingly consents to sex, even if she would not have willingly consented to sex when sober.
It was a nice try, but it is irrelevant, the two things are not comparable because nobody is initiating sex via the use or threat of force. At worst they are simply taking advantage of someones impaired state. Boorish and uncouth certainly, also certainly immoral, but no force has been used so don’t compare it to cases that explicitly use force to accomplish their end.
Also I don’t think an appeal to fraud will work either as the beer goggles were applied willingly.
@jz,
The point in law where a person can’t usually consent when intoxicated would be when they are unconscious. Unless they have been deliberately and unwittingly drugged a drunk person has chosen to become impaired and their responsibility for their state cannot be ignored.
@jason,
Is it morally acceptable to sell an acutely manic man a pricey sports car? He willingly chose not to take his lithium and Depakote.
Is it morally acceptable to give a depressed, crying, intoxicated man the gun he’s asking for? He willingly drank the alcohol.
@jason,
Is it morally acceptable to take the money an intoxicated man is throwing around the bar? He willingly drank the alcohol.
Is it morally acceptable to sodomize an intoxicated man? He willingly drank the alcohol.
@jz,
Actually it is legal to take the money given away freely by the drunk who does so without coercion, it is perfectly legal to sodomize a drunk man who willingly consents to it. Same with a drunk woman.
There is no force or threat of force in any of the examples. Is it moral? No I don’t think so, but the point is that there isn’t a crime being committed in any of these cases.
I am actually acutely bothered that you can’t actually get this through your head. None of this is rocket science. If a person willingly intoxicates themselves and then _freely_ chooses to do something stupid they are responsible for the consequences of those choices. Why do you seek to treat people like children? Why do you seek to absolve people of personal responsibility?
You can cite all the examples you like, but any action that is freely chosen while intoxicated is the responsibility of the person who freely chose to get into a state of intoxication.
Will people take advantage of their poor choice? Probably. Is that a good thing? No, but why do you wish to so desperately absolve people from the consequences of their own free choices?
Do you just like to control the lives of others? Or did you do something &*$&#@* stupid that you regret and by seeking to shift the blame from others you think you can somehow shift your own culpability for whatever idiotic act you chose.
BTW, if we take this brain dead reasoning you are offering seriously, you can’t actually prosecute people for drink driving as they are not responsible for actions they take while intoxicated according to you.
@jason,
do you understand the difference between moral accountability and a law?
do you understand the difference between an analogy used to teach or enlighten, and attempted use of an analogy to win an argument?
do you understand that all analogies are incomplete?
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I haven`t read the whole post so you might have covered it but a huge percentage of reported rapes are categorized by the police as unfounded which means something along the lines of the incident reported by the woman does not meet the legal definition of rape even if what she says is true. So they are not false accusations but they are not rapes either and they make up an enormous amount of the reported rapes. Considering that such a large percentage of reported rapes does not meet the legal definition of rape an equal or probably much higher proportion of the women reporting in studies to have been raped but not having reported it is highly likely.
@jz,
Yes I do understand the difference between moral accountability and the law. Do you? Are you sure?
Of course all analogies are incomplete. That is why they are analogies and not isomorphic cases. The problem you have is that for an analogy to work the relevant portions of the question need to be the same. The problem with your analogy to robbery or theft is that robbery requires the use of force or the threat of force. Any analogy you try to draw that attempts to use an example that requires the use of force or the threat of force is invalid because there is an explicit assumption that no force is used on the person who is inebriated.
You then tried an analogy using manic individuals, but that is also invalid because again, the relevant parts that need to be analogues are not present. There is no force in such an example, but you are dealing with a mentally ill person who has no control over their state. That is the equivalent of having sex with a women that you have deliberately drugged to make her compliant. But in the case of inebriation the person has willingly consented to get into this state.
You used theft as an example, but that is also not sufficiently analogous because it involves the taking of a persons property while they are not present.
You want to talk as if the person who has intentionally chosen to drink is absolved of all responsibility while they are inebriated. That the woman who has sex with a man, or a person who gets behind the wheel while drunk, is not responsible for their behavior and that somehow absolves them of responsibility for the choices they made. It doesn’t, they are responsible for the decisions they make in a state they have deliberately chosen to get into.
Does it make it right to take advantage of their state? As I said, no. But if people are going to choose to be get heavily intoxicated they shouldn’t be surprised if they chose to do something they regret and they bear the responsibility for choices freely chosen when drunk.
As I said at the outset, it might be boorish, or poor form to have a hookup with a drunk woman but unless she is unconscious, she is choosing her course of action freely, so no crime is committed.
@jason,
I’m wishing that I was enlightened somehow by your efforts here.
@jz,
Thats ok, I like beating my head against a wall. And it helps clarify my own thinking to deal with people who just don’t get the obvious.
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@jz,
We all wish you were enlightened by his efforts; you need it.
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