Because the actual formal-accusation:conviction statistics completely disagree with you. Only something like 25% of reported rapes in the US result in an arrest — let alone prosecution or conviction.
Complaints is the key here. Obviously, we can't say much about the incidents that don't go reported. If one looks at the conviction rate for rape complaints it's around 2%. So if we take the lower estimate for false complaints, it still means that only 4% of cases are provable one way or the other, and that those which are have a 50/50 chance of being true or false complaints. (I'm looking at '92 stats, at a glance it appears the the rates for both rape and false rape convictions have risen a fair bit since then).
Interestingly, a 2% conviction rate is on par with that of robbery.
In 2016, about 90k instances of rape were reported to police [1]. The lowest figure I've seen for the % of accusations that are false is 2% the highest ones from well reputed sources are in the low 20s but let's go with the FBI's figure of 8% (this is for "provably false" accusations, so it's still only a lower bound). That would mean that of the 90k accusations, we have somewhere between 1.8k to 5.6k false accusations. 35 of which were prosecuted. This is a prosecution rate of roughly 2-0.5%, compared to 5% for rape (this is the figure I most commonly see when discussing the percentage of rapes that are prosecuted). I don't see much evidence to back up the claim that false accusations are prosecuted more frequently than rape.
> False accusations of rape are more likely to be prosecuted than rape.
We have the rate of prosecution for rape: 4-5%. In order for your claim to be true we need to obtain the rate of prosecution for the false accusation of rape. To do this we need the total number of false accusations and the number of such accusations that were prosecuted.
Even with conservative definitions, about 2-8% of accusations are determined to be false (and I'm being generous and not even considering the estimates that don't just examine instances where th allegations are provably false). I found that 90k rapes were reported, which would yield 1.8-5.6k false accusations.
Thanks for pointing out the mismatch of the 35 prosecutions for false accusations of rape coming from England and not the US. Unfortunately I was not able to find the number of prosecutions for false accusations of rape in the US (Google gave two whole pages of articles stating that it's important to believe accusers, and no statistics).
But if we apply the same analysis with your figures then the results are even worse. Of the 144k alleged rapes we would have 2.8k- 11.4k false accusations. Even if we just used the lowest estimates of the rate of false accusations then it would still only be 35 of the over 2,800 false accusations that get prosecuted - only 1.25%. The higher end for the estimates of the rate of false accusations would put the percent of false accusations that get prosecuted even lower, under one percent.
Sure but the statistics, 1% of reported rapes lead to conviction and 2-8% are shown to be false, do not support the conclusion that false report of rape is not a big issue.
There is a lot of conflicting research on this, but many reports show that false rape accusations are no more common than false accusations of any other kind of crime.
Only 33% of the cases even result in an arrest [1] and 6 in 1000 cases actually result in jail time. That only 384/1000 are even reported to police shows what people think their options are in getting justice. (US is not an exception by any means.)
False reports/accusations of crime in general tend to be low, in the 2-8% range reported here. By this logic, we can dispense with this whole silly and expensive criminal justice system and just convict everyone based on simple accusation. We used to call this sort of thing "lynching", and it is generally considered a good thing that it's become rare.
"It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer"[1]
Also note that the "low rate" for false accusations is for cases were the false accusation is proven:
"The determination that a report of sexual assault is false can be made only if the evidence establishes that no crime was committed or attempted. This determination can be made only after a thorough investigation. This should not be confused with an investigation that fails to prove a sexual assault occurred.
In that case the investigation would be labeled unsubstantiated. The determination that a report is false must be supported by evidence that the assault did not happen."[2][3]
By this standard, cases of rape that are actually proven are also low, depending on where you look in the 7% range of reported[3]. So the "we just don't know" figure is very, very high, we simply do not have strong evidence either way[4]. Other studies have found false report rates much higher [5][6].
The Air Force study[6]
is interesting in that admissions of false accusations increased dramatically when it became known that
a Polygraph would be administered (though AFAIK, the Polygraph information itself was not used as indication of a false report, only an actual admission). The raw data of admitted false cases was then combined with other characteristics of those cases to develop a model for "likely" false accusations (things like "does the rape cause problems or solve problems for the accuser", "does the report follow widely assumed patterns of rape vs. real patterns", "do the injuries show patterns that are typical of self-infliction" etc.) With that model, applied conservatively, the false report rate was above 50%.
There is
also an interesting investigation showing that the 2% figure that pops up in many "studies" books and
papers on the subject can all be traced to a single off-the-cuff, non-researched remark.[7]
So the reference figures are at best flawed and way too uncertain to base a model on.
Additionally, the statistics are incorrectly applied to a single event ("How likely is someone ..."). The statistics only work for a sufficiently large population.
Finally, as many others have pointed out, the events are not uncorrelated, and the assumption that they are and that "lots of reports must mean there is something there" is a well-documented fallacy of human cognition. The McMartin case is an obvious one, but there is also the famous case of the French city of Orleans, where an entire city was convinced that girls were being drugged and abducted in fashion stores, which turned out to be completely unfounded.[8][9][10]
So please pack up this model, or let's all just abandon our legal system, due process and meet for a happy lynching.
That take is grossly misleading. Around 15% of rape allegations are proven true. 2-10% are proven false (either a solid alibi or a later confession from the supposed victim).
The remaining 75% of cases are neither proved nor disproved. If you are accused, but don't have enough evidence of your innocence (or they don't have evidence of guilt), the case is not prosecuted or results in a hung jury.
The most you can accurately say is that for every 2 convictions there is one person falsely accused.
> They aren't, they are far rarer then actual cases of rape
This is not a statement of fact, that's an assumption you've made.
Actual studies of this are rare and usually bitterly disputed, but part of the reason they're rare is that they tend to reveal alarmingly high false reporting rates. I mean truly disturbingly high.
If you look at cases which are proven to be false, the rate is usually suggested to be somewhere between 5% and 10% of all claims depending on the study.
But this does not imply 90% of accusations have merit. The definition of "false claim" is extremely strict, such that a case that does not proceed because e.g. the alleged victim is caught lying about the events does not count as "false" on the grounds that they might just genuinely be confused. Virtually all claims of rape or sexual assault fail to proceed to actual charges.
The most famous study (by Kanin) examined every single allegation of rape reported to the police department of a small midwestern city. It defined a false accusation to be "any accusation in which the victim admitted it was false". It reported a rate of around 40% of all allegations being false.
> It is a crime that is notoriously hard to convict, to the point where most victims keep silent.
You can't know that. Given that false reporting definitely occurs, victims that keep silent may or may not be real victims. Only investigations can resolve that question. And one reason it's a hard crime to convict is the rate at which accusers recant their accusations or stop cooperating with investigations as they proceed.
This is the most detailed and recent study, where they went through all rape cases in the UK with a fine comb. It puts the most likely figure of false accusations at 3%, within a range of 1% to 9%.
Other numbers:
- 7% (of all women) had been raped,
- Around 75% of those cases were reported to police
- only 14% of cases resulted in a trial
- less than half of trials resulted in conviction
- Police officers guess that 30% of reported rapes are false accusations when asked in general terms, even though these same officers came to such a conclusion in only 9% of specific cases they handled.
The article cited[0] is a review of analysis from ~1980 to 2005. If you restrict yourself to only analysis that don't count cases involving alcohol as false reports, the number drops to 2-3%.
The article also notes that false reports are usually different from real reports, important among these facts is that false reports are often attention seeking, and so are examples of what society thinks rape "should" look like (violent, anonymous) as opposed to what it often is (ambiguous and often by someone the victim knows and trusts). As such, the percent of false rape accusations where a particular individual is accused of the crime are likely even lower than this 2-3% number.
> but it’s much more important that the innocent are not wrongfully punished
This depends. It's much less morally cut and dry than you claim.
You're right that the stats are not very good, but that's because they significantly under-count incidences of rape.
Rape cases can be complex, especially where the alleged rapist is also accused of domestic violence or coercive control, and this fear of violence from the alledged perpetrator or his family and friends leads some people to retract their allegation. Note that this does not mean they are false allegations, here's a woman who was prosecuted for falsely retracting a true allegation.
> In November 2010, the Court of Appeal considered an appeal against sentence in the case of Ms A, who ultimately pleaded guilty to perverting the course of justice on the basis that she had falsely retracted true allegations of rape she had made against her husband.
The annual crime survey (seen as reliable statistics) say that about 140,000 women and about 8,000 men are raped each year. There are about 6,000 prosecutions, and about 2.5k convictions.
There are 35 prosecutions for false allegations of rape, out of about 90 cases that failed because the victim retracted their statement.
The feeling that woman make very many false allegations of rape is not ture; the feeling that they go unpunished for this is not true. It's frankly disturbing that men seek to focus so much attention on this tiny number - fewer than 100 people per year - and not on the very much larger figure of over 8,000 men and 140,000 women who are victims of rape.
> in the overall majority of cases
[Citations needed]
Because the actual formal-accusation:conviction statistics completely disagree with you. Only something like 25% of reported rapes in the US result in an arrest — let alone prosecution or conviction.
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