Male violence and harassment of women

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Fishnut
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Re: Male violence and harassment of women

Post by Fishnut » Fri Feb 25, 2022 8:06 pm

Koci Selamaj pleads guilty to murder of Sabina Nessa. He changed his plea at the start of his trial. He will be sentenced on 7 April.
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Re: Male violence and harassment of women

Post by Fishnut » Tue Mar 29, 2022 8:27 am

The Met police have decided not to launch a formal investigation into claims from 20 women that Noel Clarke groped, harassed and/or bullied them.
The Met said it would not launch a formal investigation “following a thorough assessment by specialist detectives”. A spokesperson said: “We have updated the complainants. If any further allegations related to those already assessed are reported, then it will be thoroughly considered.”...

“Following a thorough assessment by specialist detectives, it was determined the information would not meet the threshold for a criminal investigation,” said a Met spokesperson.
Panorama have investigated the atrocious conviction rates for rape in the UK.
the programme does the important work of highlighting the fact that the system is stuck in a destructive cycle, with the CPS second-guessing (potential) juries and declining cases they don’t think will result in a conviction; the police then second-guess the CPS and don’t forward cases they don’t think the CPS will think … And victims make a similar calculation in turn.
Decisions like this only serve to highlight the destructive cycle and feed into it.
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Re: Male violence and harassment of women

Post by snoozeofreason » Tue Mar 29, 2022 2:37 pm

Fishnut wrote:
Tue Mar 29, 2022 8:27 am
...
(Lucy Mangan) wrote:the programme does the important work of highlighting the fact that the system is stuck in a destructive cycle, with the CPS second-guessing (potential) juries and declining cases they don’t think will result in a conviction; the police then second-guess the CPS and don’t forward cases they don’t think the CPS will think … And victims make a similar calculation in turn.
...
I wouldn't want to comment on the decision not to charge Clarke, but the passage from Lucy Mangan's article that you quoted is the sort of thing that generates a lot of frustrated comment from lawyers on the internet (of all genders).

That's partly because the stuff about "second guessing", if given without necessary context, is potentially misleading, and partly because it ignores the "Giant flying pachyderm" that the Secret Barrister and just about every internet legal type have been screaming about for the last ten years - namely that chronic underfunding of the legal system means that cases (for all criminal offences) take years (literally) to progress through the system, with the consequence that complainants withdraw their support for those cases.

The CPS "second-guessing" decisions of juries is a fundamental element of the legal system, which applies to all cases. Before launching a prosecution the CPS must satisfy itself that two tests are passed. In the first, evidential stage, test the CPS must satisfy itself that "an objective, impartial and reasonable jury or bench of magistrates or judge hearing a case alone, properly directed and acting in accordance with the law, is more likely than not to convict the defendant of the charge alleged". The second test is that prosecution is in the public interest (a rape case would only fail that test in very exceptional circumstances).

The evidential stage test, if applied correctly, is an essential safeguard. It would be in nobody's interest to put complainants through the ordeal of a trial in which there was little chance that a conviction could be secured. Proceeding with weak cases would also add to the delays in progressing cases through the system.

Of course if the CPS second-guess incorrectly - either by underestimating the willingness of juries to convict, or their own ability to build a strong case - then there's a problem. However there doesn't seem to much evidence that this is where the issue lies. The CPS get convictions in about 60% of the rape prosecutions that they bring which is, if anything, a bit low if the threshold for bringing a prosecution is a 50% chance of conviction. There have been allegations that the CPS base their determinations on past experience of rape cases, rather than on the success rates that they could potentially achieve with better performance, but a judicial review based around this idea didn't get anywhere, and it is rather optimistic to expect that a service experiencing swingeing cuts is somehow going to improve its performance.

Proper funding of the legal system would not, in itself, solve all of the problems related to the high attrition rate in rape cases, but it would
go a long way. Mangan's comments about second guessing just focus attention away from things that are (relatively) easy to address to things that
are much harder to deal with, which is a shame because she is a writer I normally admire.
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Re: Male violence and harassment of women

Post by El Pollo Diablo » Tue Mar 29, 2022 3:37 pm

Except that the quoted passage from Mangan doesn't just focus on the CPS. It also focuses on the police, who have to guess what the CPS will do, and on the victims, who have to guess what the police will do. And given all the myriad failures of the police that have been documented in recent times, as well as the shitshow that the CPS has offered up in recent years (the conviction didn't fall to near-zero all by itself, it hasn't always been this bad), to be honest I absolutely don't accept that what Mangan writes there is a focus on the wrong area. There might be more to it, but a lot of people, including large portions of the female half of the country, need a lot of convincing that that area isn't a massive problem.
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Re: Male violence and harassment of women

Post by snoozeofreason » Tue Mar 29, 2022 3:54 pm

El Pollo Diablo wrote:
Tue Mar 29, 2022 3:37 pm
Except that the quoted passage from Mangan doesn't just focus on the CPS. It also focuses on the police, who have to guess what the CPS will do, and on the victims, who have to guess what the police will do. And given all the myriad failures of the police that have been documented in recent times, as well as the shitshow that the CPS has offered up in recent years (the conviction didn't fall to near-zero all by itself, it hasn't always been this bad), to be honest I absolutely don't accept that what Mangan writes there is a focus on the wrong area. There might be more to it, but a lot of people, including large portions of the female half of the country, need a lot of convincing that that area isn't a massive problem.
Fair point, but the police do have to second guess what the CPS will do. Pushing through cases where the CPS are very unlikely to decide that the evidential stage test is met will just result in even longer delays, and more anguish for complainants. If the police are second guessing incorrectly, or over-cautiously, then that's a problem, just as it would be if the CPS were doing that. But it wouldn't be helpful for them not to second guess at all.

If the conviction rate you refer to is the proportion of cases reported to police that result in a conviction, then its decline has occurred because the denominator (cases reported) has risen sharply in recent years but the numerator (convictions achieved) has not. The increase in the number of cases reported has occurred without there being any corresponding increase in the number of rapes that actually happen (at least not if the Crime Survey for England and Wales is to be believed). That suggests that victims are, if anything, considerably more willing to report cases than they had been in the past. Unfortunately, as I said, many cases fail to proceed because complainants drop out as the case drags on.
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Re: Male violence and harassment of women

Post by snoozeofreason » Tue Mar 29, 2022 4:14 pm

Just for the sake of clarity, I am not suggesting that there aren't massive problems with the criminal justice system. It's just that its glacial slowness is a much more significant factor than any "second guessing" that is occurring.
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Re: Male violence and harassment of women

Post by Fishnut » Tue Mar 29, 2022 7:28 pm

snoozeofreason wrote:
Tue Mar 29, 2022 2:37 pm
... Mangan's comments about second guessing just focus attention away from things that are (relatively) easy to address to things that are much harder to deal with, which is a shame because she is a writer I normally admire.
As an aside, that quote isn't Mangan giving her opinion on what's happening, it's her describing what Panorama said is happening. It's a TV review. And the very next line of the review is,
All of this – plus many other contributory factors, like the years it can take to get a “strong” case to court after the pandemic’s effects on an already underfunded, tottering system, putting individuals’ recovery processes largely on hold.
I didn't quote that line because it wasn't pertinent to the point I was making but given the length of your critique about her comment it probably would have been wise to read the whole piece first.

As to your main point, no one denies that the cuts to the judicial system have an impact on victims receiving justice - justice delayed is justice denied, as I've said before in this thread. But the barriers that rape victims face in order to obtain justice are far higher than those for victims of other crimes and have been made significantly higher in recent years. The CPS has been repeatedly accused of raising the barrier in an an attempt to raise its conviction rate by not taking 'weak' cases to court. In the most recent Victims Commissioner report Dame Vera Baird writes that,
I have made no secret of the fact that I have been alarmed by the collapse in rape prosecutions since 2017. This dramatic fall took place after a series of CPS roadshows in which a senior official in the CPS is reported to have urged rape prosecutors to a “touch on the tiller” against prosecuting “difficult” rape cases in order to ensure a conviction rate of 60% and higher.
The Guardian reported on this back in 2018, describing how the CPS had moved from its 'merits-based approach in cases,
to weed out weaker cases, as akin to taking a “bookmakers’ approach” – with prosecutors encouraged to take charging decisions based on past experience of similar cases.
Last year End Violence Against Women applied for a judicial review on behalf of 20 women who felt their rapes weren't prosecuted due to them being seen as 'weak' cases. The application was unsuccessful (PDF) but the Victim Commissioners report noted,
The court accepted that, in order to improve conviction rates, CPS head office directed its rape lawyers to remove 350 ‘weaker’ cases from the criminal justice system in that year by not prosecuting them. The court did not find that change to be unlawful...

Cases made public by EVAW in the judicial review showed that decisions not to charge, made in accordance with the head office diktat, are riddled with rape myths and stereotypes, echoing the approach of the ‘ complainant credibility unit’ found in Avon and Somerset police.
An article about the judicial review written before it was held has quotes from one of the victims, who describes her ordeal and the amount of evidence she provided the police. I recommend reading it and seeing what is considered a 'weak' case.
After her case was dropped, Araniello was informed that her credibility was undermined by the fact that she had not reported the rapes to the police who visited her flat. [her violent rapist was still in the flat and could overhear what she was saying to the officer]...

Other evidence was disregarded, such as Ben’s police interview; photographic evidence of bruising to Araniello’s thighs and hands; exhibits of her slashed clothing and of the knife; WhatsApp messages from Ben apologising for “what he had done” and expressing disbelief and remorse.
In 2019 the CPS denied that the decline in convictions was their fault, instead blaming the police for failing to refer cases to them,
...the director of public prosecutions again denied there had been any shift in the CPS approach to charging, blaming the fall on a drop in the number of referrals from police and an increase in the volume of evidence from digital information on mobile devices for slowing down investigations into allegations of rape. The number of suspects referred by the police to the CPS for a charging decision fell from 4,370 in 2017-18 to 3,375 in 2018-19.
Though the same article notes,
...analysis of the figures reveals that since 2014 CPS decisions to prosecute have fallen at almost double the rate of police referrals to the CPS – 51% compared with 27%.
Going back to the Victims Commissioner report, Dame Vera writes,
Last year, I warned that we were witnessing the effective decriminalisation of rape. Nothing in the past year has swayed me from that perspective. The uncomfortable truth is that if you are raped in Britain today, your chances of seeing justice are slim...

The government’s end-to-end rape review, published in June 2021, was commissioned more than two years previously to answer four questions: why complainants withdraw from the criminal justice process, why referral rates from police vary wildly from force to force, why Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) prosecutions have collapsed, and what the impact of the court process is on complainants. In its final form, it fails to answer any of them...

Probably the best proposal is to further pilot a policing programme, first run in Avon and Somerset police as ‘Project Bluestone’. It is founded upon five pillars, namely: suspect- focussed investigations; disruption of repeat offenders; victim engagement, training and learning for police; and improving the keeping and use of criminal justice data. It remains remarkable to me that police need to be instructed to investigate the suspect, not the victim. Indeed, academics who worked with the force speak of what was previously a ‘complainant credibility unit’ rather than a rape investigations department. This will be true of forces up and down the country. [my emphasis]
To bring it back to my original point, Noel Clarke has credible evidence against him from multiple women that he engaged in sexual assault and harassment, yet the police have decided it does not reach criminal levels. Maybe they are right, but given the context described above I do not trust their judgement on this. To quote again from the article,
“It’s upsetting but not surprising,” said [Jamie Klingler of Reclaim These Streets]. “Time and time again the Met fails the women of London. Once again, this cements the message that there is no point in [making complaints to the police], as they either don’t believe us or minimise the impact and claim that the standard for prosecution isn’t reached. When will enough really be enough? When will they believe women?”
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Re: Male violence and harassment of women

Post by Fishnut » Tue Mar 29, 2022 9:14 pm

I'm watching the Panorama documentary and have to do some commenting.

It starts with the statistic that only 1% of rapes result in conviction (though as the review points out, this is 1% of reported cases. It's estimated that 5/6 rapes go unreported.)

We begin with a police officer saying,
It’s not a figure that I’m proud of cos it could put a victim off coming to the police.
I think that 'could' is being very generous.

We are following a number of different victims in their pursuit of justice. Two of them are sisters, Alex and Chyann, who were raped by their father for years. Chyann went to her school teachers when she was a child, who did their job and she ended up being interviewed by the police and said her dad had raped her. But her sister Alex said that she was making up the claims, leading the CPS not to prosecute, though they were still removed from their parents care. When they were older they tried again, and were interviewed by the police. When asked why she said her sister was lying the last time, Alex said that she didn't want the abuse to stop, thinking it was normal and that meant her dad loved her. But despite this understandable change of her story, the CPS again decided not to prosecute. I'm quoting from their letter which is shown on screen,
A significant weakness is that when your sister alleged abuse in 2011 you denied that you had been abused yourself and indeed said that your sister was lying. While I appreciate you have given an explanation for this, my concern is that, even with that explanation, we will not be able to make a jury sure to the high standard necessary to secure a conviction of which account is the correct one when other inconsistencies in the case and early opportunities for disclosure are also considered.

Please be assured that this decision does not mean that your complaint has not been taken seriously and that you have not been believed. However, I have to consider if the evidence means we could make a jury sure to the high standard required to secure a conviction and I do not believe we could.

I can confirm that my decision has been reviewed by the Senior District Crown Prosecutor in charge of the Rape and Serious Sexual Assault Offending Team and he has agreed that there is no realistic prospect of conviction. [23 mins 23]
She was 11 and had been told to not tell anyone. That the CPS felt that they are incapable of explaining to a jury sufficiently why an 11 year old child who had been groomed and repeatedly abused might not tell the truth about that abuse, and later recants their testimony, suggests to me that they don't hold their legal team in very high regard.

The sisters appealed and eventually got the CPS to prosecute their father, though due to coronavirus the case was significantly delayed. During the trial, Alex was cross-examined by her father's barrister for more than 2 hours. Yet after deliberating for just an hour and a half the jury found him guilty on all 14 charges and he was sentenced to 40 years in prison. This is a case the CPS rejected twice on their belief they couldn't convince the jury of his guilt. That jury spent about 6 minutes per charge to decide he was guilty and the judge decided his crimes were severe enough to warrant 40 years behind bars.

Dame Vera Baird is interviewed and says,
In the last five years, the CPS took a decision to prosecute fewer rape cases in order to increase their conviction rate. What seems to happen now is prosecutors try to second-guess whether a jury would like this case... So jurors aren't getting the chance to decide for themselves....If the CPS don't change their approach, the police can't get past them. [25 mins 30ish]
Another statistic,
In 2015, police in England and Wales submitted 28% of reported rape cases to the CPS. Last year, they submitted just 6%. [31 mins 00]
Dame Vera Baird again,
The CPS have this cycle of caution coming back from prosecuting. Of course, that knocks on to the police, who say, "well these kinds of cases won't get past the CPS, cost us a lot of time and effort to investigate them. We won't do so." So they're second-guessing what the CPS will do.
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Re: Male violence and harassment of women

Post by bagpuss » Wed Mar 30, 2022 8:58 am

snoozeofreason wrote:
Tue Mar 29, 2022 2:37 pm
Fishnut wrote:
Tue Mar 29, 2022 8:27 am
...
(Lucy Mangan) wrote:the programme does the important work of highlighting the fact that the system is stuck in a destructive cycle, with the CPS second-guessing (potential) juries and declining cases they don’t think will result in a conviction; the police then second-guess the CPS and don’t forward cases they don’t think the CPS will think … And victims make a similar calculation in turn.
...
I wouldn't want to comment on the decision not to charge Clarke, but the passage from Lucy Mangan's article that you quoted is the sort of thing that generates a lot of frustrated comment from lawyers on the internet (of all genders).

That's partly because the stuff about "second guessing", if given without necessary context, is potentially misleading, and partly because it ignores the "Giant flying pachyderm" that the Secret Barrister and just about every internet legal type have been screaming about for the last ten years - namely that chronic underfunding of the legal system means that cases (for all criminal offences) take years (literally) to progress through the system, with the consequence that complainants withdraw their support for those cases.

The CPS "second-guessing" decisions of juries is a fundamental element of the legal system, which applies to all cases. Before launching a prosecution the CPS must satisfy itself that two tests are passed. In the first, evidential stage, test the CPS must satisfy itself that "an objective, impartial and reasonable jury or bench of magistrates or judge hearing a case alone, properly directed and acting in accordance with the law, is more likely than not to convict the defendant of the charge alleged". The second test is that prosecution is in the public interest (a rape case would only fail that test in very exceptional circumstances).

The evidential stage test, if applied correctly, is an essential safeguard. It would be in nobody's interest to put complainants through the ordeal of a trial in which there was little chance that a conviction could be secured. Proceeding with weak cases would also add to the delays in progressing cases through the system.

Of course if the CPS second-guess incorrectly - either by underestimating the willingness of juries to convict, or their own ability to build a strong case - then there's a problem. However there doesn't seem to much evidence that this is where the issue lies. The CPS get convictions in about 60% of the rape prosecutions that they bring which is, if anything, a bit low if the threshold for bringing a prosecution is a 50% chance of conviction. There have been allegations that the CPS base their determinations on past experience of rape cases, rather than on the success rates that they could potentially achieve with better performance, but a judicial review based around this idea didn't get anywhere, and it is rather optimistic to expect that a service experiencing swingeing cuts is somehow going to improve its performance.

Proper funding of the legal system would not, in itself, solve all of the problems related to the high attrition rate in rape cases, but it would
go a long way. Mangan's comments about second guessing just focus attention away from things that are (relatively) easy to address to things that
are much harder to deal with, which is a shame because she is a writer I normally admire.
My bold - I don't understand this bit. Surely if the threshold for bringing a case is that a jury should be more likely than not to convict, then if the CPS were getting that assessment spot on* then the conviction rate should be a tiny fraction over 50%. So how is a conviction rate of 60% low? To me that very much says that the CPS is erring too much on the side of not putting through cases that are a bit too close to 50/50 for their liking.

There's a fundamental problem** in the system here in that if the CPS are being measured on the conviction rate of cases they prosecute, they are being incentivised not to prosecute any but the easiest to win cases. A better measure might be convictions out of the cases that are forwarded to them, although that might then lead to them pressuring the police not to forward cases that have a low likelihood, and here we go again with the chain of second guessing.



*Just to be clear, I don't for a moment expect that the CPS could possibly get it that spot on, that would require some kind of psychic ability
**OK, there are many fundamental problems in the system, I think we can all acknowledge that, and chronic and massive underfunding is undoubtedly the biggest.

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Re: Male violence and harassment of women

Post by bagpuss » Wed Mar 30, 2022 9:11 am

Fishnut wrote:
Tue Mar 29, 2022 9:14 pm
A significant weakness is that when your sister alleged abuse in 2011 you denied that you had been abused yourself and indeed said that your sister was lying. While I appreciate you have given an explanation for this, my concern is that, even with that explanation, we will not be able to make a jury sure to the high standard necessary to secure a conviction of which account is the correct one when other inconsistencies in the case and early opportunities for disclosure are also considered.

Please be assured that this decision does not mean that your complaint has not been taken seriously and that you have not been believed. However, I have to consider if the evidence means we could make a jury sure to the high standard required to secure a conviction and I do not believe we could.

I can confirm that my decision has been reviewed by the Senior District Crown Prosecutor in charge of the Rape and Serious Sexual Assault Offending Team and he has agreed that there is no realistic prospect of conviction. [23 mins 23]

She was 11 and had been told to not tell anyone. That the CPS felt that they are incapable of explaining to a jury sufficiently why an 11 year old child who had been groomed and repeatedly abused might not tell the truth about that abuse, and later recants their testimony, suggests to me that they don't hold their legal team in very high regard.
I find this very surprising to the point of shocking. When I was on a jury, the adult victim had changed her story and not one person on the jury had any difficulty in understanding why an adult victim of domestic abuse might not initially have told the full truth, and that case hung almost entirely on the victim's evidence. Even if Alex's evidence was all they had, I think most juries would be very sympathetic to the idea that an 11 year old child might not tell the truth in this situation but they also had Chyann's evidence and it sounds like her story was consistent from first to last.

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Re: Male violence and harassment of women

Post by jimbob » Wed Mar 30, 2022 9:39 am

bagpuss wrote:
Wed Mar 30, 2022 9:11 am
Fishnut wrote:
Tue Mar 29, 2022 9:14 pm
A significant weakness is that when your sister alleged abuse in 2011 you denied that you had been abused yourself and indeed said that your sister was lying. While I appreciate you have given an explanation for this, my concern is that, even with that explanation, we will not be able to make a jury sure to the high standard necessary to secure a conviction of which account is the correct one when other inconsistencies in the case and early opportunities for disclosure are also considered.

Please be assured that this decision does not mean that your complaint has not been taken seriously and that you have not been believed. However, I have to consider if the evidence means we could make a jury sure to the high standard required to secure a conviction and I do not believe we could.

I can confirm that my decision has been reviewed by the Senior District Crown Prosecutor in charge of the Rape and Serious Sexual Assault Offending Team and he has agreed that there is no realistic prospect of conviction. [23 mins 23]

She was 11 and had been told to not tell anyone. That the CPS felt that they are incapable of explaining to a jury sufficiently why an 11 year old child who had been groomed and repeatedly abused might not tell the truth about that abuse, and later recants their testimony, suggests to me that they don't hold their legal team in very high regard.
I find this very surprising to the point of shocking. When I was on a jury, the adult victim had changed her story and not one person on the jury had any difficulty in understanding why an adult victim of domestic abuse might not initially have told the full truth, and that case hung almost entirely on the victim's evidence. Even if Alex's evidence was all they had, I think most juries would be very sympathetic to the idea that an 11 year old child might not tell the truth in this situation but they also had Chyann's evidence and it sounds like her story was consistent from first to last.
I have never served on a jury but it is utterly shocking
Have you considered stupidity as an explanation

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Re: Male violence and harassment of women

Post by snoozeofreason » Wed Mar 30, 2022 10:38 am

bagpuss wrote:
Wed Mar 30, 2022 8:58 am
snoozeofreason wrote:
Tue Mar 29, 2022 2:37 pm
...
The CPS get convictions in about 60% of the rape prosecutions that they bring which is, if anything, a bit low if the threshold for bringing a prosecution is a 50% chance of conviction.
My bold - I don't understand this bit. Surely if the threshold for bringing a case is that a jury should be more likely than not to convict, then if the CPS were getting that assessment spot on* then the conviction rate should be a tiny fraction over 50%. So how is a conviction rate of 60% low? To me that very much says that the CPS is erring too much on the side of not putting through cases that are a bit too close to 50/50 for their liking.

...
It's because "more likely than not" means 50% or greater, rather than 50% exactly. Some of the cases that the CPS prosecute will be ones that they consider to have only just met the evidential stage test. If their judgement is correct, then around 50% of those cases will result in conviction. But there will be other cases that they consider to be absolute certainties, and you would expect 100% of those to result in conviction, still others would fall half way between those two extremes, and about 75% of those would end in conviction, and so on.

The net effect of this is that, for all crime, the average conviction rate is around 80% (taking "conviction rate" to mean the percentage of prosecutions that result in conviction). But there are significant variations by offence. Some offences have conviction rates much higher than 80% (typically because the nature of the offence means that evidence is either very convincing or non-existent), others have conviction rates significantly lower, with sexual offences being a notable example.

If the conviction rate for an offence is on the low end, then there are two possible explanations. It could be that the CPS are being overly optimistic about their chances of getting a conviction, or it could be that the nature of the offence means that there are a lot of borderline cases (i.e. ones that only just meet the evidential threshold), and relatively few dead certainties. The second explanation is plausible in the case of sexual offences, so there is no reason to think that the CPS are being over-optimistic about those cases. However the conviction rate doesn't offer much reason to think they are being overcautious - at least not systematically overcautious. There will be individual cases, such as the ones fishnut mentioned, where the CPS are reluctant to prosecute cases which, in the end, a jury finds easy to convict on. However the overall conviction rate means that there must be a lot of other cases where a complainant puts their life on hold for years waiting for a case to reach trial, only to find that a jury acquits the defendant.
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Re: Male violence and harassment of women

Post by bagpuss » Wed Mar 30, 2022 11:17 am

snoozeofreason wrote:
Wed Mar 30, 2022 10:38 am
bagpuss wrote:
Wed Mar 30, 2022 8:58 am
snoozeofreason wrote:
Tue Mar 29, 2022 2:37 pm
...
The CPS get convictions in about 60% of the rape prosecutions that they bring which is, if anything, a bit low if the threshold for bringing a prosecution is a 50% chance of conviction.
My bold - I don't understand this bit. Surely if the threshold for bringing a case is that a jury should be more likely than not to convict, then if the CPS were getting that assessment spot on* then the conviction rate should be a tiny fraction over 50%. So how is a conviction rate of 60% low? To me that very much says that the CPS is erring too much on the side of not putting through cases that are a bit too close to 50/50 for their liking.

...
It's because "more likely than not" means 50% or greater, rather than 50% exactly. Some of the cases that the CPS prosecute will be ones that they consider to have only just met the evidential stage test. If their judgement is correct, then around 50% of those cases will result in conviction. But there will be other cases that they consider to be absolute certainties, and you would expect 100% of those to result in conviction, still others would fall half way between those two extremes, and about 75% of those would end in conviction, and so on.

The net effect of this is that, for all crime, the average conviction rate is around 80% (taking "conviction rate" to mean the percentage of prosecutions that result in conviction). But there are significant variations by offence. Some offences have conviction rates much higher than 80% (typically because the nature of the offence means that evidence is either very convincing or non-existent), others have conviction rates significantly lower, with sexual offences being a notable example.

If the conviction rate for an offence is on the low end, then there are two possible explanations. It could be that the CPS are being overly optimistic about their chances of getting a conviction, or it could be that the nature of the offence means that there are a lot of borderline cases (i.e. ones that only just meet the evidential threshold), and relatively few dead certainties. The second explanation is plausible in the case of sexual offences, so there is no reason to think that the CPS are being over-optimistic about those cases. However the conviction rate doesn't offer much reason to think they are being overcautious - at least not systematically overcautious. There will be individual cases, such as the ones fishnut mentioned, where the CPS are reluctant to prosecute cases which, in the end, a jury finds easy to convict on. However the overall conviction rate means that there must be a lot of other cases where a complainant puts their life on hold for years waiting for a case to reach trial, only to find that a jury acquits the defendant.
Ah, sorry, embarrassing maths fail on my part. So yes, whether or not 60% is low or not compared to what it could be (as opposed to compared to other types of crime where it obviously is low) depends very much on what proportion are close to the 50/50 conviction probability and what proportion are higher and while we can't know that, it seems likely that in sexual offences there's a lot more that are closer to 50/50 than 90/10.

Thanks for taking the time to explain without telling me I'm an idiot ;)

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Re: Male violence and harassment of women

Post by jimbob » Sun Apr 17, 2022 11:56 am

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk ... =operanews


Merseyside Police sergeant running "would you wouldn't you" WhatsApp group about female colleagues
Have you considered stupidity as an explanation

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jimbob
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Re: Male violence and harassment of women

Post by jimbob » Fri May 06, 2022 8:32 am

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-ber ... =operanews

Jailed Newbury police sergeant was in offensive WhatsApp group
Have you considered stupidity as an explanation

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Sciolus
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Re: Male violence and harassment of women

Post by Sciolus » Fri May 20, 2022 6:47 pm

f.cking hell. This is much worse than originally reported.

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Grumble
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Re: Male violence and harassment of women

Post by Grumble » Fri Aug 26, 2022 9:42 am

My 13 yo daughter has now experienced not harassment as such, but definitely creepy encounters on a few occasions. Definitely the end of a level of innocence.

On Sunday, walking as a family but my son and I were ahead a few metres, a drunk guy we had to pass (at 12:30 ffs) lurching around the pavement called my wife and 2 daughters “the witches of Eastwick”. I guess it sounded funny to him.

On Monday she was in the park with a friend, a guy asked them if they were married.

It’s left her feeling insecure and worried about going out alone.
where once I used to scintillate
now I sin till ten past three

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Tessa K
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Re: Male violence and harassment of women

Post by Tessa K » Fri Aug 26, 2022 10:24 am

Grumble wrote:
Fri Aug 26, 2022 9:42 am
My 13 yo daughter has now experienced not harassment as such, but definitely creepy encounters on a few occasions. Definitely the end of a level of innocence.

On Sunday, walking as a family but my son and I were ahead a few metres, a drunk guy we had to pass (at 12:30 ffs) lurching around the pavement called my wife and 2 daughters “the witches of Eastwick”. I guess it sounded funny to him.

On Monday she was in the park with a friend, a guy asked them if they were married.

It’s left her feeling insecure and worried about going out alone.
It's a rite of passage for girls when they start getting unwanted attention. My tactic was and is, if you're in a group and it's safe, say f.ck off. Otherwise, eyes down, keep walking.

Girls also learn the tough lesson that they can't always get the understanding and support they need from male friends who too often just keep quiet when it happens.

I would advise girls and young women in an uncomfortable situation to walk close to another woman or ask if they can walk together. I still do that now occasionally. She may feel odd doing it but we've all been there, we know.

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Re: Male violence and harassment of women

Post by temptar » Fri Aug 26, 2022 1:18 pm

I don't see it as a right of passage. It isn't like a period, or finishing GCSEs.

What it is sh.t bad behaviour. Which doesn't have to be.

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Re: Male violence and harassment of women

Post by Tessa K » Fri Aug 26, 2022 3:11 pm

temptar wrote:
Fri Aug 26, 2022 1:18 pm
I don't see it as a right of passage. It isn't like a period, or finishing GCSEs.

What it is sh.t bad behaviour. Which doesn't have to be.
Sadly it is, though. Entry into a new phase of life you have to learn to live with.

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Re: Male violence and harassment of women

Post by Cardinal Fang » Fri Aug 26, 2022 8:20 pm

The next rite of passage is the routine "phone me when you get home" sign off you say to your friends when you've been out of an evening.

CF
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Grumble
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Re: Male violence and harassment of women

Post by Grumble » Fri Aug 26, 2022 9:51 pm

Cardinal Fang wrote:
Fri Aug 26, 2022 8:20 pm
The next rite of passage is the routine "phone me when you get home" sign off you say to your friends when you've been out of an evening.

CF
:(
where once I used to scintillate
now I sin till ten past three

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Tessa K
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Re: Male violence and harassment of women

Post by Tessa K » Sat Aug 27, 2022 8:11 am

Cardinal Fang wrote:
Fri Aug 26, 2022 8:20 pm
The next rite of passage is the routine "phone me when you get home" sign off you say to your friends when you've been out of an evening.

CF
Which is something people never say to men.

Also, something young men never hear: parent to daughter: you're not going out dressed like that.

(The solution to that is to wear a long coat over the skimpy party clothes)

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Cardinal Fang
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Re: Male violence and harassment of women

Post by Cardinal Fang » Sat Aug 27, 2022 3:25 pm

I never had that issue. Being a jeans, t-shirt and DMs girl, the "you're not going out dressed like that" was an attempt to get me to dress more girly

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Re: Male violence and harassment of women

Post by tom p » Sat Aug 27, 2022 4:25 pm

Tessa K wrote:
Sat Aug 27, 2022 8:11 am
Cardinal Fang wrote:
Fri Aug 26, 2022 8:20 pm
The next rite of passage is the routine "phone me when you get home" sign off you say to your friends when you've been out of an evening.

CF
Which is something people never say to men.

Also, something young men never hear: parent to daughter: you're not going out dressed like that.

(The solution to that is to wear a long coat over the skimpy party clothes)
The 2nd statement isn't true. It just depends on how the young man in question dresses & his parents.

And, in all fairness to parents, young blokes would rarely go out dressed in clothes which practically showed their schlong, unlike lasses who will often try and go out wearing something that barely covers their arse.

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