A 1 in 70 chance
Rape is basically not a crime except in very rare cases.
The number of people prosecuted and convicted for rape has fallen to the lowest level since records began, prompting outrage and concern from campaigners, who say the crime is being decriminalised.
People? They mean men. Women can’t rape. It’s men who are being allowed to rape with impunity, not people.
Prosecutions and convictions more than halved in three years while rapes increased. Fewer rape cases were referred by police and in turn the Crown Prosecution Service took an even smaller number of those cases to court.
Police recorded 55,130 rapes but there were only 2,102 prosecutions and 1,439 convictions in England and Wales in 2019-20. Three years earlier, 41,616 rapes were recorded, a third less than currently, and there were 5,190 prosecutions and 2,991 convictions.
…
Sarah Green, the director of the End Violence Against Women (EVAW) coalition, said: “Today’s figures show starkly that we are right to say rape has been effectively decriminalised. What else can you call a 1 in 70 chance of prosecution?
“The DPP’s constant exhortation to victims that they must come forward is frankly too much to take. How can he say that in any sincerity when the outcomes are so disastrous and when he is casting doubt on previous prosecutions?”
Thursday’s figures also show the highest conviction rate on record, at 68.5%. The data prompted critics to argue that the high conviction rate is a clear result of a covert policy change in how rape cases are treated.
In other words they’ve become more risk-averse: they’re upping their conviction rate by prosecuting fewer cases. If the result is that rapists feel pretty confident that they’ll get away with it, well, that’s just the price someone has to pay.
Ghislaine Maxwell will be happy to hear that women can’t rape.
No she won’t. Women can still procure, aid and abet, sexually assault – but they can’t rape.
If The Guardian is hoping to avoid offending the TRAs by avoiding the term “men” here, they’re unlikely to be thanked for their troubles. “But Women rape, TOO! ” is going to lead to “Because some Women have penises!” which will suddenly turn into transphobia.
Is there any other crime with such a low prosecution rate? Perhaps going after rapists now feels like kink-shaming.
If you aid and abet X crime, you are convicted of X crime. Conviction as an aider and abettor still counts as an X-crime conviction.
In addition, some jurisdictions have statutes defining “rape” to include “rape by a foreign object,” such as when the perpetrator inserts fingers or bottles or broomsticks or dildos into the woman’s vagina. A woman is capable of foreign-object rape, which still counts as a rape conviction. I don’t remember ever seeing such a charge, however, in any of the cases I reviewed in 37 years.
maddog:
As I understand it, in England and Wales rape is with a penis and any other object or body part is a different offense. I’ve no idea about aiders-and-abettors, though.
Women can’t rape? Well, that depends on the definition, doesn’t it? If rape is, for instance, merely nonconsensual intercourse, then one can argue that women can do that. This definition could be said to be too broad, and that rape involves the insertion of a certain organ, and further that biological function and power imbalances preclude one direction of offense. On the other hand, both of these conceptions exclude some actions that many would intuitively categorize as rape. And that is before we even touch statutory rape.
I’m not arguing, just curious how people define the term.
Yes, of course it depends on the definition. If you define rape as “batting a ball back and forth with a racket” then women can do it, certainly, but that’s not the usual commonly understood definition.
That was the fastest reductio ad absurdum I’ve ever seen. To bring the question back from the brink of silliness, it might be worth considering the US DOJ’s official definition of rape as used in Uniform Crime Reports since 2012:
This means that when the US government provides statistics on rape, this is the thing they’re talking about. Furthermore, the new definition includes instances in which consent is impossible because of incapacity on a permanent or temporary (e.g. drunkenness) or age basis, and also no longer requires proof of force used.
Prior to this redefinition, nothing sexual done to a person without their consent, except forcible male penile penetration of a female vagina, could be classified as rape. I’ll assume everybody here has imagination, and examples are unnecessary. I think this definition is an improvement.
This definition means that when a woman says Ghislaine Maxwell raped her more than 20 times:
https://www.insider.com/woman-says-ghislaine-maxwell-raped-her-more-than-20-times-2020-7
Maxwell can be charged with rape in the US. I feel okay about that.
Papito, I feel okay about that, too, but the article references the Crown Prosecutor. That suggests it is not the US providing the statistics, since we don’t have a Crown Prosecutor (I presume the equivalent, or approximately so, of our Attorney General?). I don’t personally have knowledge of the definition in England, so I might have to go with latsot. In which case, Ophelia is right, a woman cannot be tried under that definition of rape.
Semantics, yes. Picky, perhaps. But if we’re going to talk about statistics, it is helpful to consider to whom those statistics apply.
Papito @8, wouldn’t that depend on when GM committed the crime? If it was before that definition/interpretation was in place I’m sure the defence would argue that it was inapplicable. Then again I don’t know how US law works and what influence a DOJ policy has on a court, as opposed to the actual statute.
As Iknklast says @9, the article is clearly UK based, so in that context UK law applies in any case.
Inknlast, NZ, as a Commonwealth country, has a very similar system to the UK (more specifically England and Wales). There is an Attorney General, who is the chief law officer of the Government, overseeing crown prosecutions and providing legal advice to the Government. Within the AG’s office is (in England and Wales) the Treasury Solicitor). The AG’s office appoints private practice solicitors to carry out prosecutions on behalf of the Crown. In NZ, Crown Solicitors are appointed by the AG and act under a warrant issued by the Governor General acting as the Queen’s representative. So I guess very broadly (I hear lawyers all over cringing) you could say the AG positions are roughly the same, the US Attorney is roughly the equivalent of the Treasury Solicitor and the USDA’s or maybe AUSDA’s are the equivalent of a Crown Solicitor.
Rob, thanks for that explanation. I am always fascinated by how governments work (or don’t work, in some cases). Before I became a scientist/playwright/otter, I was a political science major (it took me a long time to decide what I wanted to be when I grew up; I’m still working on it, and maybe by the time I retire, I’ll have it figured out).
As for when the crime was committed, the constitution prohibits the passing of ex post facto laws, so I imagine she would be subject to whatever law was in place when she committed her crimes.
Iknklast, I find politics fascinating in a bizarre train wreck kind of way. I’ve always been into following and analyzing politics since high school when I joined protests against the Springbok tour of NZ. My political awakening was during a time when between oil shocks and the threat of nuclear war we didn’t feel there was a great future ahead of us, but we wanted one and were idealistic enough to fight for it. For a while I felt we were actually winning. Now, not so much. I’ll fight to my last breath though.
Some time I’ll try and explain how in NZ in the late 70’s/early 80’s we felt that our Prime Minister was becoming so authoritarian and over bearing that a film was made showing a fictional character that was pretty clearly based on him seizing power through a coup. That film (Sleeping Dogs) was the birth of Sam Neill’s film career. That Prime Minister would still be regarded as unpleasant and authoritarian today, but wouldn’t stand out from the pack.
I’m onto my third career. I’ll hopefully stick with this one till retirement. It’s interesting and pays the bills. After I retire I’ll find something I actually really want to do. Maybe carpentry if my eyes don’t get too much worse. I’d like to do something with my hands and heart, rather than head I think.
How did they get the 1 in 10 figure? 2,102 out of 55, 130 is more like 1 in 26.
A clarification on #5:
I asked mrs latsot, who is a lawyer, about the aiding and abetting thing. It’s not her area of expertise but she thinks it’s possible that Maxwell’s activities could be considered Joint Enterprise and that she could, technically, be convicted of rape. It depends on the specifics of the abetting.