Something needs to be done about the low conviction rate for rape. NOT THIS.
Very slippery slope.
What is it with Scotland, and their insistence on buggering about with centuries-old, tried and tested conventions.
Half of what they try to do is just mad (and usually has to be quickly reversed)
Good. Never should have happened to begin with, it’s sad that due to the nature of the crime, convictions are hard to get, but that doesn’t justify removing the accused rights.
During the summer I sat on the jury of a rape trial. It absolutely crystallised my view juries need to go. There are two aspects of this.
1) I was totally fucked up by the experience. This is hard to talk about because it inevitably sounds like I am downplaying the harm the process does to the victim, which of course I do not wish to do. But to go from being bored in the jury lounge to hearing graphic rape details in 40 minutes….it was very bad. This is not a good system. Mental health support was a fucking samaritans poster. No I am not okay with this.
2) whilst I am confident in our verdict (guilty) and do not any qualms about its strength (although the feeling of being the foreman who read out a verdict I knew would send someone to prison for years is…I feel something akin to guilt but that’s probably the wrong word) I do not feel jurors can reliably give verdicts. The defence barrister tried to use that she waited 48 hours to tell anybody as evidence it didn’t happen…on 2024 they still think that will help. That tells me the system is not set up to do proper analysis of whether a person is guilty or not.
3) from a systematic point of view the guy is serving 7 years based on how 12 people interpreted largely oral evidence – no one can ever ask us why, how, or really consider of we might have been wrong. The impossibility of an appeal really should concern people.
Edit: Realise I should probably propose an alternative. In general, there is nothing special about a jury system. Judges hear trials without them in most European countries and I’ve never seen any particular evidence it increases injustice.
I understand why it was suggested and why it has been abandoned. I think people would have been convicted more often but the convictions might well have had less or no credibility with the public.
Insane the SNP went ahead with this, even in the report they got the idea from they were like “this makes us extremely uncomfortable and we don’t know if its a good idea”.
>in an attempt to increase conviction rates
No doubt a lot of rapists do walk free because it’s such a difficult crime to prove, and I’m not sure I know the solution. But I think it needs to be pointed out just what an insidious statement that is.
The article compares conviction rates for rape to all other crimes which seems illogical.
With other crimes, it is frequently much easier to prove that a crime took place at all. You have a body or a briefcase full of stolen cash or something, anything.
In a rape case, most of the evidence only leads to the conclusion that intercourse happened. Of course, the victim might have injuries but this isn’t always the case.
Saying we convict in 90% of other crimes is comparing apples to hamburgers. Most other crimes cannot be boiled down to a matter of two people having conflicting recollections of events.
I think a reasonable change that could be made to rape trials (maybe even all trials to be honest) is that testimony and cross examination is given anonymously. Maybe through a digital avatar silhouette or something with voice changing software.
Personally, I feel like that would remove an element of bias and prejudice from rape trials. How many women have their testimony doubted because the jury assume the woman to be a “bit of a slag” or to have a working class accent or whatever. Particularly if the accused is someone who is well spoken and is judged to be from a better background.
We should be able to eliminate things like that so people are judged solely on the content of what they say.
Good, this was an absolutely terrible idea that undermines the fundamental principles of our legal system and what makes it robust.
Conviction rates for crimes like rape will always be lower than other crimes due to their nature. The response isn’t to throw out the foundations of our legal system to get a better statistic.
They need to find a way to increase the number of cases that actually make it to court rather than trying to find more of the small amount of defendants who end up in court guilty.
I would be very uncomfortable with any tries to change the burden of proof to be lower than beyond reasonable doubt.
I don’t know the answer to getting more cases to court other than funding for the police, cps, and courts etc.
Some may hold up Jury trial as a counter to judge bias – but a look at the discussion on Twitter or Reddit demonstrate our lack of knowledge, cognitive dissonance and our complete lack of self awareness when it comes to our own biases.
A judge is not immune to bias – however having a single person who’s decisions we can audit – makes for better interventions than relying on a random bunch of people selected to decide on point of law and ethics that they are not equipped to – you can hardly audit a process that isn’t a like for like from one trial to the next.
Rape reporting, investigations and trials need to be overhauled. That I can’t dispute. I just don’t think juries are equipped to deal with processing evidence and arguments.
The whole point of our judicial system is to judge people with a jury of their peers. A bit sketchy if you remove the jury.
Edit: Imagine downvoting a person because they said “Trial by jury is the whole point of our system” yikes, big L there downvoters.
Arbitrarily discarding our basic principles of justice to ‘increase convictions rates’ is absurd.
We operate a jury system because it is the greatest safeguard of our liberty and against wrongful convictions. It ensures that, unless 12 (or 10) uninterested, ordinary people decide you are guilty – you will never see a prison cell.
One only has to look at the perversity of the magistrates court to see the issues that arise where one single individual, with their own preconceptions and biases, is the sole adjudicator of fact.
It is not unprecedented to have jury-less criminal trials in the crown court, complex frauds for instance can be tried this way. Importantly, this is done *very* rarely where the nature of the fraud would be near impossible for the layman to understand. This is not equatable to a, seemingly untested, hypothesis that nearly all 21st century jurors believe in rape myths.
As others have pointed out, rape is, and always will be, very difficult to prove. Not because of myths, or our jury system but because of the nature of the crime. It is nearly always carried out in private, it is nearly always one word against another’s and there is always a very fine line between consent. This can generate some degree of reasonable doubt in nearly every case.
The only way really to ‘boost conviction rates’ would be to reverse the standard of proof, which would then lead to a bunch of people being falsely convicted of rape, human rights violations and legal philosophers rolling in their graves.
You can’t really win here
Next trial….victimless rape’s – predicted outcome to be better.
I’m sure you could increase the conviction rate of any crime if you load the deck against the defendant and leave it down to a single individual.
I don’t know what the solution is to low conviction rates and I am sure many rapists escape justice because the crime simply can’t be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Whatever the solution is, it can’t be making it more likely that innocent people are convicted.
They were really trying to make Ace Attorney in real life with this one
In the UK a female can not rape a male so the entire system is bonkers.
I’m all for increasing convictions, but changing the goal posts is just stupid. We need better policing and more importantly, we need a culture that allows victims to come forward immediately and feel supported….while there’s still evidence. Al fayed is a prime example…its decades later that people speak up… he’s dead. If the culture was different and people felt they could speak up when it happened, he’d have been punished and many saved.
Not victim blaming…I’m blaming the culture and society and police and everything that prevents or hinders people from feeling safe to speak up.
The good thing is… we can all do a small part in helping to change this.
19 comments
Something needs to be done about the low conviction rate for rape. NOT THIS.
Very slippery slope.
What is it with Scotland, and their insistence on buggering about with centuries-old, tried and tested conventions.
Half of what they try to do is just mad
(and usually has to be quickly reversed)
Good. Never should have happened to begin with, it’s sad that due to the nature of the crime, convictions are hard to get, but that doesn’t justify removing the accused rights.
During the summer I sat on the jury of a rape trial. It absolutely crystallised my view juries need to go. There are two aspects of this.
1) I was totally fucked up by the experience. This is hard to talk about because it inevitably sounds like I am downplaying the harm the process does to the victim, which of course I do not wish to do. But to go from being bored in the jury lounge to hearing graphic rape details in 40 minutes….it was very bad. This is not a good system. Mental health support was a fucking samaritans poster. No I am not okay with this.
2) whilst I am confident in our verdict (guilty) and do not any qualms about its strength (although the feeling of being the foreman who read out a verdict I knew would send someone to prison for years is…I feel something akin to guilt but that’s probably the wrong word) I do not feel jurors can reliably give verdicts. The defence barrister tried to use that she waited 48 hours to tell anybody as evidence it didn’t happen…on 2024 they still think that will help. That tells me the system is not set up to do proper analysis of whether a person is guilty or not.
3) from a systematic point of view the guy is serving 7 years based on how 12 people interpreted largely oral evidence – no one can ever ask us why, how, or really consider of we might have been wrong. The impossibility of an appeal really should concern people.
Edit: Realise I should probably propose an alternative. In general, there is nothing special about a jury system. Judges hear trials without them in most European countries and I’ve never seen any particular evidence it increases injustice.
I understand why it was suggested and why it has been abandoned. I think people would have been convicted more often but the convictions might well have had less or no credibility with the public.
Insane the SNP went ahead with this, even in the report they got the idea from they were like “this makes us extremely uncomfortable and we don’t know if its a good idea”.
>in an attempt to increase conviction rates
No doubt a lot of rapists do walk free because it’s such a difficult crime to prove, and I’m not sure I know the solution. But I think it needs to be pointed out just what an insidious statement that is.
The article compares conviction rates for rape to all other crimes which seems illogical.
With other crimes, it is frequently much easier to prove that a crime took place at all. You have a body or a briefcase full of stolen cash or something, anything.
In a rape case, most of the evidence only leads to the conclusion that intercourse happened. Of course, the victim might have injuries but this isn’t always the case.
Saying we convict in 90% of other crimes is comparing apples to hamburgers. Most other crimes cannot be boiled down to a matter of two people having conflicting recollections of events.
I think a reasonable change that could be made to rape trials (maybe even all trials to be honest) is that testimony and cross examination is given anonymously. Maybe through a digital avatar silhouette or something with voice changing software.
Personally, I feel like that would remove an element of bias and prejudice from rape trials. How many women have their testimony doubted because the jury assume the woman to be a “bit of a slag” or to have a working class accent or whatever. Particularly if the accused is someone who is well spoken and is judged to be from a better background.
We should be able to eliminate things like that so people are judged solely on the content of what they say.
Good, this was an absolutely terrible idea that undermines the fundamental principles of our legal system and what makes it robust.
Conviction rates for crimes like rape will always be lower than other crimes due to their nature. The response isn’t to throw out the foundations of our legal system to get a better statistic.
They need to find a way to increase the number of cases that actually make it to court rather than trying to find more of the small amount of defendants who end up in court guilty.
I would be very uncomfortable with any tries to change the burden of proof to be lower than beyond reasonable doubt.
I don’t know the answer to getting more cases to court other than funding for the police, cps, and courts etc.
Some may hold up Jury trial as a counter to judge bias – but a look at the discussion on Twitter or Reddit demonstrate our lack of knowledge, cognitive dissonance and our complete lack of self awareness when it comes to our own biases.
A judge is not immune to bias – however having a single person who’s decisions we can audit – makes for better interventions than relying on a random bunch of people selected to decide on point of law and ethics that they are not equipped to – you can hardly audit a process that isn’t a like for like from one trial to the next.
Rape reporting, investigations and trials need to be overhauled. That I can’t dispute. I just don’t think juries are equipped to deal with processing evidence and arguments.
The whole point of our judicial system is to judge people with a jury of their peers. A bit sketchy if you remove the jury.
Edit: Imagine downvoting a person because they said “Trial by jury is the whole point of our system” yikes, big L there downvoters.
Arbitrarily discarding our basic principles of justice to ‘increase convictions rates’ is absurd.
We operate a jury system because it is the greatest safeguard of our liberty and against wrongful convictions. It ensures that, unless 12 (or 10) uninterested, ordinary people decide you are guilty – you will never see a prison cell.
One only has to look at the perversity of the magistrates court to see the issues that arise where one single individual, with their own preconceptions and biases, is the sole adjudicator of fact.
It is not unprecedented to have jury-less criminal trials in the crown court, complex frauds for instance can be tried this way. Importantly, this is done *very* rarely where the nature of the fraud would be near impossible for the layman to understand. This is not equatable to a, seemingly untested, hypothesis that nearly all 21st century jurors believe in rape myths.
As others have pointed out, rape is, and always will be, very difficult to prove. Not because of myths, or our jury system but because of the nature of the crime. It is nearly always carried out in private, it is nearly always one word against another’s and there is always a very fine line between consent. This can generate some degree of reasonable doubt in nearly every case.
The only way really to ‘boost conviction rates’ would be to reverse the standard of proof, which would then lead to a bunch of people being falsely convicted of rape, human rights violations and legal philosophers rolling in their graves.
You can’t really win here
Next trial….victimless rape’s – predicted outcome to be better.
I’m sure you could increase the conviction rate of any crime if you load the deck against the defendant and leave it down to a single individual.
I don’t know what the solution is to low conviction rates and I am sure many rapists escape justice because the crime simply can’t be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Whatever the solution is, it can’t be making it more likely that innocent people are convicted.
They were really trying to make Ace Attorney in real life with this one
In the UK a female can not rape a male so the entire system is bonkers.
I’m all for increasing convictions, but changing the goal posts is just stupid. We need better policing and more importantly, we need a culture that allows victims to come forward immediately and feel supported….while there’s still evidence. Al fayed is a prime example…its decades later that people speak up… he’s dead. If the culture was different and people felt they could speak up when it happened, he’d have been punished and many saved.
Not victim blaming…I’m blaming the culture and society and police and everything that prevents or hinders people from feeling safe to speak up.
The good thing is… we can all do a small part in helping to change this.
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