Rape culture in government

[Content note: abuse of power, rape]

There was a debate in Parliament yesterday regarding undercover policing, raised by Caroline Lucas MP (Green, Brighton Pavilion).

One of the issues raised was the practice by police infiltrating a group suspected of criminal activity of forming sexual relationships with the members of that group (so far, the cases which have received publicity have all involved male police officers and female members of the group).

It is of course fairly likely that many of the people with whom the undercover officers formed sexual relationships would not have done so had they known that the other person was an undercover police officer. As Lucas states:

The eight women allege that the men’s actions constitute a breach of articles 3 and 8 of the European convention on human rights. Article 3 asserts that no one shall be subject to inhuman or degrading treatment, and article 8 grants respect for private and family life, including the right to form relationships without unjustified interference by the state. The women go on to allege that the actions amount to common law tortious acts of deceit, misfeasance in public office and assault.

It's not at all clear to me from a reading of the precedent and legislation whether people in a similar situation could also allege rape, as has been suggested (and rightly, because morally it is). It hinges on what "capacity to consent" means in the legislation, and the positive precedents generally have elements which are clearer than in this sort of case¹.

In that context, the government's answer is disturbing.

Nick Herbert MP (Conservative, Arundel and South Downs), the relevant Minister, replies - regarding the legality of this under RIPA, an issue which remains untested by the courts and on which a number of conflicting public statements have been made by the police:

What matters is that there is a general structure and system of proper oversight and control, rather than specific directions on behaviour that may or may not be permitted. Moreover, to ban such actions would provide a ready-made test for the targeted criminal group to find out whether an undercover officer was deployed among them. Specifically forbidding the action would put the issue in the public domain and such groups would know that it could be tested.

So it's okay for an undercover police officer to commit actions morally (and possibly legally) constituting rape, if to do otherwise would put their cover at risk, according to the government.

Herbert doesn't explicitly state it one way or the other, but presumably given some of the other cases that Lucas raised, he also considers it legitimate for an undercover police officer to plant a live incendiary device in a public area, if to refuse would put their cover at risk (a blanket ban on committing life-threatening acts of terrorism would obviously make it too easy for terrorist groups to out undercover officers, right?).

Footnote

¹ Generally one of:

1. The offender viewed the act as sexual but convinced their victim(s) that it wasn't (e.g. fake medical examinations)
2. The offender had used some sort of threats or pressure
3. The offender was pretending to be an entirely different person (as opposed to presenting a different identity of the same person). The distinction between the two is not trivial, given how many people have extremely legitimate reasons to have multiple identities for different contexts.

One of the things that makes me angry about this sort of case is that I can't think of a way to word legislation such that (under rape culture: the existing legislation would be more than adequate if we weren't) this would be illegal, but legitimate omissions about one's past or other identities would not be, especially in the context of a government (and much of the populace) which believes that people can legitimately only have one identity.

The "insanity" defence

[trigger warning]

The news that the murderer of 77 people in Norway has been declared "insane" is not surprising. After all, he was white and not a believer in some scary foreign religion - if he was "sane" he wouldn't have done what he did.

The psychiatric report concluded

[...] he lived in his "own delusional universe where all his thoughts and acts are guided by his delusions"

Okay - this has probably been translated from the original Norweigian, and may well have lost some nuance, but let's break it down:

1. His beliefs about the nature of reality were inaccurate
2. His thoughts and actions were based on his beliefs about the nature of reality.

The second part of that is essentially what everyone does.

So the "insanity" must be concluded from the first part - that his beliefs about the nature of reality were inaccurate. But this is true to at least some extent of everyone, too.¹

Furthermore, plenty of people share his particular belief that there is a Muslim invasion of Europe planned and that our governments are complicit in it. Most of them do not commit mass murder as a result, however.

So: the Norweigian murderer has a commonly-shared mistaken belief, and chose highly illegal actions as a consequence. He therefore cannot be held - by "insanity" - to be criminally responsible for those actions.

Meanwhile, for less default-y terrorist suspects - black, Muslim, non-European, etc. - the idea that they could rationally decide to kill people (even if the decision was based on faulty premises) is completely accepted, and they're tried as criminals.

The idea of that form of "insanity"² being treated as in some way excusing him of responsibility is completely wrong.

Footnote

¹ For an entirely uncontroversial example that affects almost everyone: optical illusions. They're artefacts of millions of years of evolved visual processing where an "optimisation" that works most of the time gives the wrong result in a few cases.

² Using the definition of "mistaken belief about reality", anyone who had no reasonable way of knowing based on their perceptions that their action would have a particular criminal consequence should not be held criminally responsible³ - and most of our laws recognise this fact: there are exceedingly few "strict liability" laws.

³ I'm aware that, given what we know about rapists, many of them would be able to use this "defence" on the grounds that they are also deeply mistaken about the nature of reality. However, the precedent that people whose mistaken beliefs make them a general danger to society - highly rare among those considered "insane" by psychiatrists - may be separated from it for as long as those beliefs remain is well-established, and would have much the same effect. At any rate, if we get to the stage where accused rapists are advised by their lawyers to plead "not guilty due to insanity", we'll be at a stage where rape culture is generally considered a "mistaken belief" - and, minus the ablism in that sentiment, I'd be happy with that.

Transgender Day of Remembrance

[trigger warning]

Today is the 13th International Transgender Day of Remembrance.

There have been at least 221 murders of trans people in the last 12 months - when murders of trans people that didn't make the news, and more indirectly-caused unnecessary deaths - suicides, cissexism-caused poverty or lack of access to medical treatment, and so on - are accounted for, the number will be far higher.

Bigotry and hatred of trans people are extremely commonplace. Legal protections are rare, and even when they do exist they're often more theoretical than practically useful. Even in countries with some protective laws, there are harmful laws too - Sweden's mandatory sterilisation, for instance. It's not surprising, given the support for hatred by states, companies, and others among the powerful that so many trans people are killed.

"Not surprising" doesn't mean "inevitable". With enough work, this can be changed.

Loitering within tent

[trigger warning: state violence]

Why aren't the people in charge simply ignoring the Occupy movement? It's not obvious to me.

Petitions, protests, marches, letter-writing campaigns, voting - all can be and are largely ignored by elected politicians. A representative who is already sympathetic to their cause can use these things to be more forceful in Parliament. With consistent effort of this sort over many years, then the number of sympathetic representatives in Parliament can be grown and public opinion can be altered - but this is an extremely slow process and as, for instance, the blatant racism or heterosexism shown by some MPs today demonstrates, can be ignored at will by an unsympathetic representative.

The "ultimate sanction" of making them lose elections is only a statistical deterrent. A party may occasionally lose power temporarily - though that was going to happen anyway - but individual representatives in safe seats (and there are equivalents in almost all electoral systems) can stay in office as long as they want.

So, given that, what is it about Occupy that stops it being ignored. Look at it entirely from an abstract point of view - ignore the aims, just look at the methods.

• A protest march will, if it's large enough, block off multiple streets in a major city for several hours. Normal day-to-day life is disrupted over a large area. Then, everything returns to normal, and it gets pushed back in to the pile of previous marches.
• Occupy take an area of public space, put some tents up, and stay there. The vast majority of the city continues as normal - indeed, from a distance, it's not obviously there - and even nearby it's generally relatively straightforward to walk around them. Generally, far fewer people are participating at any one time, in any particular Occupy location, than would appear at any medium-sized protest march in the same city.

The only thing that makes it more "disruptive" than a protest march is the permanence in a public space. But alone, that's not particularly disruptive¹. They may be a reminder of something governments and the powerful don't like to be reminded of - but they should be an easily avoidable and ignorable reminder. The late Brian Haw camped outside Parliament for years without changing policy, and only really made the news on the (many) occasions where they tried to have him removed.

Likewise, while the Occupy movements are - to a greater or lesser extent - trying to develop alternatives to the established order, that they're doing so in a square in the rain, instead of on an internet forum or on a commune somewhere out of the way, shouldn't be particularly threatening. It's not as if people merely walking by are going to pick up the interesting details of that, as opposed to a few messages and slogans on signs.

It seems fairly obvious to me that if the governments and powerful had completely ignored Occupy Wall Street, giving non-committal platitudes about the right to protest and "they can stay if they want[, I don't care]" if anyone asked, then it would not have reached the numbers it has - across North America and Europe - and not have received anything like as much press coverage.

Occupy LSX has pretty much only been in the news since it started over disputes as to whether they should be "allowed" to stay there or forcibly removed. The reasons they're actually there are getting very little press coverage. If they'd been passively allowed to continue without interference, then they'd still be there, of course - but no-one who didn't physically go past them would have noticed.

Similarly, the recent attacks on Occupy Oakland - and now New York and Seattle, at least - and the slightly less aggressive ongoing policing and "health and safety" disruptions of the sites - may have deterred some people from attending ... but they've also kept the protests in the news, encouraged the protestors, often grown their numbers overall, and made them think that their strategy is working.

Gandhi's "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win" statement has been repeated to the point of cliché about Occupy - but while their eventual victory (and what that might mean, anyway) is still nowhere near inevitable, they're larger in number and angrier as a result of governments and the powerful not being content to remain at the "ignore" stage.

So why try to repress them so much? It can't be the ideas alone. There's nothing new in their ideas (and that is not a criticism!) - and there's nothing new about a significant angry minority holding those ideas. The economic collapse has made more people receptive to those ideas, and the Occupy camps mean that (a few) more people hear about those ideas.

It also can't be about permission to hold those ideas and express them publicly. The only part unique to Occupy is "in a square" or "in a tent". Again, if ignored, they wouldn't be powerful there.

It can't be personal inconvenience or conscience. If the powerful had those, then plenty of other forms of protest would either be more rapidly effective, or more heavily restricted, or both.

It can't be about "health and safety" or other such concerns. The only health and safety potentially being affected is generally that of the people inside the Occupy camps - which they obviously don't care about. Yes, the protests may after legal argument be found to be breaking some technicality of the law. But probably most protest marches could after the fact be found to have done the same. It's largely irrelevant to whether they can be ignored, and it's more focus on enforcing every single law at once than ever gets applied anywhere else. Enforcing laws - and making up new laws to enforce - is a means, but it can't be the end in itself.

It shouldn't be about personal fear - hundreds of thousands of people in a square like Tahrir Square can be threatening to a government: that's enough people that if they did turn out to be armed revolutionaries they could do some serious damage to the government even if the police and army stayed loyal - and a sign of enough popular support that a dictator can't rely enough on their loyalty. So Egypt's government fell.

But a few hundred people? Maybe a few thousand at the biggest? That's not dangerous. They're not even particularly close to government buildings, or the offices of the truly powerful. Even if they were all armed to the teeth if they tried anything violent they would go down very quickly in the "fatally failed revolutionaries" list. And clearly if they were armed and shooting, the loyalty of the police and army is nowhere near weak enough yet in North America or Europe to end up defecting: the recent police assaults on Occupy should show they don't have a problem there.

So - there seems to be nothing to lose by simply ignoring Occupy like they ignore every other protest and fringe movement. And much more to lose by attacking them through the courts and through violence, thereby increasing anger and public sympathy. So why pick that strategy?

I really don't get it. What do the rich and powerful know that I don't that makes Occupy so specifically threatening to them that they're willing to take such disproportionate and panicked action to try - counter-productively - to stop them? What am I missing here?

Footnotes

¹ If the public space is "across a major motorway" or "in the middle of Oxford Street" or "right where you wanted to build a block of flats" or "in front of the gates of a military base", then it's definitely very disruptive. But that's not what Occupy is doing.

A tale of two anti-rape posters.

[trigger warning]

On the bus this morning I saw a poster I'd not seen before - I think it's a new one - from the local police forces. It was an anti-rape poster, and unlike this recently spotted poster from South Wales Police, it was actually a fairly good one.

I cannot find a picture of it anywhere online, and I wasn't able to take one myself, so I'll try to describe it from memory. (If anyone has a picture of this poster, please let me know!)

• Right quarter of the poster: image, grey scale, of the casually-dressed upper legs and body of a light-skinned man, holding the bars of a cell with both hands.
• Most of the rest of the poster is text, which I'm not going to get word-for-word - but in paraphrase. Top line: "don't commit rape or this could happen to you". Then, below that, three examples of things which are rape.
• First example: "If she's too drunk to say 'yes', she's too drunk to say 'no'"
• Second example: "If she's under 16, even if she consents, it's illegal and you could be arrested."
• Third example: "No matter how many times she's said 'yes' before, she can still say 'no'. Rape of your wife or partner is still rape."
• Finally, the phone number for the local police forces, and their logos.

I'm sure experts in the field could suggest areas for improvement, but compared with the usual standard for these posters, I was actually pleased to see it. It keeps its focus on the perpetrators, making very clear that their self-justifications for their actions will not be accepted - while at the same time also giving the same message to the enablers who help perpetuate these myths, and the victims who might end up being told them so much they come to believe them.

It also reminded me, because of its contrast to the South Wales poster, that I had a letter to write - so here it is. I thought about sending it directly to the government departments, but my MP - unsurprisingly - tends to get more useful replies than I do.

Dear [MP],

I was today pleased to see an anti-rape poster, produced by the local police force, that focuses strongly on the perpetrators and sets out examples of situations where they do not have consent despite their beliefs. This reminded me of the large continuing regional variation in the success of the criminal justice system in this area, as revealed most recently by the BBC through Freedom of Information requests at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/uk/11/acpo_rape_stats/xls/rapestatistics.xls

As Baroness Stern found in her report on rape prosecutions, the existing guidance is followed extremely inconsistently. If every police force had the report to charge rate of Durham (60.8%), and if every CPS region had the ability to avoid dropping cases before trial that Dorset has (only 5.4% dropped), and if every CPS region had the success in securing convictions at trial of regions such as Warwickshire (87.0%), then half of all reported rapes would result in a conviction for the rapist (either of rape or a lesser offence)

This rate is potentially achievable without any new policies or procedures - simply by following existing best practice. Furthermore, the rapidity with which some police forces and CPS regions have achieved improvements in detection and conviction rates recently suggests that - with enough political will - this conviction rate could be achieved within a decade at most.

Would you be able to contact the relevant Ministers at the Home Office and Justice to ask them:

1. if they will set as a national target that by 2020 the police and CPS will secure convictions in at least 50% of all reported serious sexual offence cases?
2. what steps they are taking to ensure that best practice is replicated quickly across all police forces and CPS regions?
3. what additional steps will they take in future to ensure that the situation improves?

Thank you

Yours sincerely

[me]

Feel free to adapt this letter to your own MP, of course.

Eviction of people loosely connected to a riot.

Here's the consultation on eviction of social tenants. Question 1 is perhaps the most important question, which would allow social landlords to evict tenants where they - or a member of their household - was convicted of certain violent crimes anywhere in the UK. Got to keep the tabloids happy.

Wandsworth and Southwark councils are trying to get ahead of the consultation, and are just doing it anyway. An actual law explicitly allowing it would mean that the only practical challenge might be to the European courts - well beyond the financial and legal means of most social tenants.

Here's what they're proposing.

We are therefore proposing to include additional provisions in Ground 2 of Schedule 2 to the Housing Act 1985 and Ground 14 of Schedule 2 to the Housing Act 1988 so that the court may grant possession where a tenant or member of their household has been convicted of violence against property (including criminal damage and offences such as arson), violence against persons at a scene of violent disorder or theft linked to violent disorder. There would in these circumstances be no requirement that the offence had been committed within the locality of the dwelling house, subject to it being committed in the United Kingdom.

Note that violence against persons must be connected to "a scene of violent disorder", but violence against property need not. Well, property is more important than people to the government. We knew that.

So, here's my response to that suggestion.

Question 1: No. The current grounds for possession should not be extended in this way. Where a tenant has been convicted of a serious crime, there already exists legal mechanisms for them to be fined, imprisoned, or given a community sentence - whatever the court believes appropriate in this particular case.

A major problem with eviction as proposed is that it makes all members of the household responsible for the behaviour of all other members of the household. Where the eviction applies to long-standing anti-social or criminal behaviour committed in the immediate locality of the housing, then requiring this mutual responsibility may be justifiable in some cases - other members of the household may have been aware of the anti-social or criminal activity for some time, and been able to discourage or prevent it. However, a de facto requirement for all members of a household to keep a sufficiently close watch on each other so that they cannot possibly commit criminal offences elsewhere is not justifiable.

Forcing someone to lose their tenancy in response to criminal behaviour committed by a fellow tenant completely unrelated to the housing or their own actions seems completely unjust, and would seem to open the landlord to challenges on human rights grounds.

Furthermore, it brings about perverse incentives. Other members of the household who might ordinarily testify against a person accused of criminal offences would in this situation know that doing so could result in them losing their own tenancies! The temptation to help the accused construct an alibi would be very great.

A third problem is that the original power, by applying to criminal or anti-social behaviour in the vicinity of the housing, has an important use in protecting others living in the same housing from this behaviour - though, as paragraph 1.5 of the consultation document points out, it may sometimes only move rather than solve problems.

Where applied to crimes committed a long distance from the housing, this use vanishes. The crime is not connected to the housing, so removing the tenants from the housing cannot affect the crimes. The convicted tenants have to live somewhere, so removing them from their present housing will make little difference.

Imprisonment is already available as an option to the courts where someone needs to be removed from general society to prevent crime, and this is both more appropriate and avoids punishing people who did not commit the crime.

If you have time, please read the consultation document and send in your own response. I know I haven't covered everything that's wrong with the proposals in mine. With the riots falling away into the distance - and the underlying causes ignored to produce more later - the need to do this to appease the reactionary press might be avoided.

Government-mandated weight. The inevitable consequence.

[trigger warning]

Unfortunately, I'm not at all surprised that this has happened. A UK Council is taking steps to have four of a family's seven children forcibly adopted (or fostered without contact).

Why? Because the children are fat, and have continued being fat against the local government's demands. Clearly the solution is to take them away from their parents - and perhaps away from each other, too - in the hope that the massive added stress will cause weight loss.

According to all the press reports, the family have "faced no accusations of deliberate abuse or cruelty". Their solicitor has previously stated that "obesity was the main reason for the children being taken from their parents".

The rather flawed research on "obesity" is a contributing cause, but this goes way beyond that. I'm unimpressed with the government's research on "obesity" in children. But, even if that research is accepted at face value, the only detectable effects of "obesity" in children are "low self-esteem and behavioural problems" and a greater chance of being "obese" in later life.

On the basis of that research - even accepting that research as high quality and accurate, which I don't - there is absolutely no cause for intervention in this case. Either:

1. Weight is largely not under a person's control. In this case, adoption won't change their weight. But it probably will harm their psychological state, especially since there's no reason to do it. Despite this stance being supported by the scientific literature, "everyone knows" means that more likely the council believe option 2...
2. Weight is entirely under a person's control. In this case, the effects of being heavy at their age are comparable to the effects of being adopted. There being no evidence of abuse or cruelty, the only effects are psychological - which must be compared with the psychological harm of adoption, including the effects on their older siblings. The children, when they get to adulthood, can then "choose to be thin" and suffer no long-term effects.

In either case, there's no reason to forcibly remove them from their family. Which should be obvious.

The only case where it isn't obvious is where you believe that "obesity" is basically an evil zombie cult. Fat people will exist near you and brainwash you into being fat. It's therefore imperative to get those children who could be un-brainwashed away from their family as soon as possible. Accepting that premise, Dundee Council's actions seem reasonable.

It's also not impossible that the Council's actions have been completely misreported. With multiple news entries several years apart, a verifiable trail in public record for at least some of the events, and several different news organisations covering this in different ways, though, that seems less likely. The Council hasn't denied any of it - merely issued a vague statement that "The council always acts in the best interests of children, with their welfare and safety in mind." which seems to be the well-known PR tactic of "lying outrageously" rather than a severely misreported case.

Big Fat Blog has contact details for four senior Council officers. I've sent them the following message.

Dear Sirs,

The recent news that Dundee Council is planning to place four children from a family of seven to either be adopted or fostered without contact, for the sole reason that they are heavier than the Council approves of, and in the absence of any deliberate abuse or cruelty by their parents, are, if accurate, extremely disturbing.

I hope that if the press reports are accurate you will be reconsidering this decision and the policies which led to it immediately, as it seems to me to be a strong infringement of the family's rights, and not in the interests of any of their seven children.

I realise that you are unable to comment on the details of any individual case for the family's privacy, and so therefore I am confining my questions to general Council policy. If the reporting is inaccurate, then your policies should provide sufficient evidence of this without the need to discuss this specific case.

1) Under what circumstances, if any, does the Council take the weight of a parent or child into account when deciding what interventions are necessary?

2) Under what circumstances, if any, would the Council require an individual to alter their weight?

3) If there are any circumstances as described in my first two questions, could you explain the reasoning behind these policies, and provide me with any research used in developing these policies.

Thank you

Since I don't live anywhere near Dundee, which is itself in a different legal and administrative jurisdiction to my own, I doubt I'll get a reply.

Inconsistencies in attitudes to the legal system

[trigger warning]

Okay, so we have a group of crimes where:

• There are very harsh sentences for those convicted, with even the least serious offences in this group likely to give several weeks if not months in jail.
• Bail is generally refused for those charged, so there's a good chance of being in jail on remand for months while a full trial is scheduled, even if completely innocent.
• The police may batter down your door at 5 in the morning to arrest you if suspected, and then hold you for days.
• There can be serious damage to one's reputation within the local community for those suspected and especially convicted of these crimes, and the police and media widely report (more widely than usual) on convictions to ensure this.
• Those accused are mostly male.
• The government, police, companies, charities and media are encouraging anonymous reports of these offences to try to ensure as many offenders as possible are caught.
• The courts have been condemned by many observers and legal experts for attempting to rush the legal process at the expense of justice.

On the whole, in fact, it's quite clearly about vengeance and being seen to be doing something, rather than justice, rehabilitation, and repairing the damage caused to society by these crimes.

One would have naively thought that the usual suspects would have been very vocal about the need to guard against the possibility of malicious accusations, and to give defendants in these cases anonymity to protect their reputations, but I haven't - including doing some searches specifically to look for them - found a single one.

Actually, I'd have been surprised if I had - but it just goes to show how little "reputation", "fairness" or "justice" are actually concerns of theirs.

Rape prevention: reply from Ofcom

[trigger warning]

Here's the answer I received from Ofcom regarding the Broadcasting Code. It's good enough on paper, but how it gets applied in practice is the key.

After confirming that "violence" in section 2 did include "sexual violence", despite a distinction being drawn between the two earlier in the document, I got this answer to my question on section 3.

The application of Rule 3.1 is essentially concerned with incitement, that is - very broadly speaking - the active encouragement of crime or disorder. Were a broadcaster to include material that actively encouraged or procured the commission of sexual offences it would be in breach of the rule. I think the prospect of such material being screened is remote.

Our application of the Code to the portrayal of sexual violence is strict. We recognise it as an especially sensitive area - from the point of view of offence as well as of harm (particularly in respect of its possible effect on those (few) men with violent sexual impulses towards women) - and regulate it accordingly.

From that answer it seems most likely that challenges to Ofcom regarding the screening of sexual violence portrayed as legitimate sexual behaviour are more likely to succeed under Rule 2.4 than Rule 3.1. I watch very little Ofcom-regulated broadcast material myself, so I expect that I won't personally be putting in any complaints - but if you do, drop a note in comments to say how it went.

Riot Links

Most of what I've been reading this week has been about the riots. Potential trigger warning for violence on all of these. Normal links post back next week, probably.

• Ms Afropolitan at Black Feminists: Riot, rage and rebellion
• Paul Raven at Futurismic: This is London (map)
• Reni Eddo-Lodge at the Guardian: Twitter didn't fuel the Tottenham riot
• Ponticelli and Voth: Austerity and anarchy: budget cuts and social unrest in europe, 1919-2009 (dense academic paper: see the graph on page 3 and the conclusions page 25/26 for a quick summary)
• Charmaine Elliott at Black Feminists: I loot, therefore I am
• Polly at Too much to say for myself: White Riot
• Joseph Harker at the Guardian: For black Britons, this is not the 80s revisited. It's worse

Riots and responsibility

[Trigger warning: violence, also applies to most of the links]

So, riots. Some other reading on the subject first:

• Hangbitching: Peckham Monday
• Camila Batmanghelidjh at the Independent: Caring costs – but so do riots
• Melissa McEwan at Shakesville: On UK Riots Part 1 and Part 2
• Andy's Miscellany: Thoughts on riots
• Left Outside: Even Rioters with Blackberrys can be Poor
• Kevin Sampson at the Guardian: Liverpool riots: I remember the buzz of mob mayhem from 1981

And for some idea of the general public response:

• This rapidly-growing petition to remove all benefits from rioters (presumably after they've been released from jail) is by far the most signed petition on the government's new petitions site.
• YouGov polling reports significant majorities in favour of major escalations of force against the riots, and 33% in favour of the use of live ammunition.

My own thoughts...

There are two things that the government needs to do. Immediately, it needs to restore an approximation of order to the affected cities. The people involved in the riots do need to be arrested and tried if possible. The government are taking this - after a shaky start - pretty seriously¹, with a large police presence in city centres at night, and rapid work to arrest the rioters during the day. The rioting isn't going to be completely over for a while - but provided nothing escalates it (see footnote¹ again) then normality should return fairly soon.

As soon as that is done, however, the government needs to do a much more important task - stop this happening again.

Riots could in theory break out at any time. There are nowhere near enough police across the country to stop this. If thousands of people decide at the same time that they want to make a point through violence, it's really difficult for the police to stop this happening.

Generally, they don't, however. Most of the time, people feel they have better choices available to them, or don't co-ordinate their attempts to riot.

The police can maintain a strong presence enough to stop these riots. They cannot maintain that presence indefinitely - already officers have been on duty for much longer than they should have been. Eventually they will need to stand down - and then, if nothing has changed, it will only be one more spark needed for more riots to start.

Unfortunately, the government seems to be determined not to change anything.

Its all too clear that we have a big problem with gangs in our country. For too long there has been a lack of focus and a complete lack of respect shown by these groups of thugs.

I am clear that they are in no way representative of the vast majority of young people in our country who despise them frankly as much as the rest of us do. But there are pockets of our society that are not just broken, but frankly sick.

When we see children as young as 12 and 13 looting and laughing, when we see the disgusting sight of an injured young man with people pretending to help him while they are robbing him, it is clear there are things that are badly wrong in our society.

For me the root cause of this mindless selfishness is the same thing I have spoken about for years: it is a complete lack of responsibility in parts of our society.

People allowed to feel that the world owes them something, that their rights outweigh their responsibilities and that their actions do not have consequences. Well they do have consequences.

We need to have a clearer code of values and standards that we expect people to live by and stronger penalties if they cross the line. Restoring a stronger sense of responsibility across our society in every town in every street in ever estate is something I am determined to do.

That's David Cameron PM (Conservative) there. But with all that talk about how people should "take responsibility", it could easily have been his Opposition counterpart, Ed Miliband MP (Labour). As the Guardian reports:

He said: "Then we have got to look into the causes, why people are going around doing this. And I think there are a complex number of causes."

He said he thought it was "partly about parental responsibility, partly about gangs and some of that culture".

Pretty similar thoughts from both. In summary, the causes of the riots are that "the rioters are scum, and their parents are scum, and their culture is scum, and we should punish the lot of them".

And with that level of shallow political analysis and responsibility-dodging from our political leadership, there are always going to be people who feel that society is giving them nothing.

Today's rioters can be dealt with. Arrested. Tried. Imprisoned. Tomorrow's rioters are still going to grow up in the same hopeless situations, being blamed by the politicians for being in those situations. And in a few years we'll arrest them too, because that's far easier than trying to figure out what the real underlying problems are and then fixing them. Far easier than treating people as actual people and listening to them and taking them seriously before they get so desperate they take to the streets to loot and destroy because that's all that's left. But no. They're scum, their families are scum, and they deserve what they get. Political consensus acheived, Parliament adjourned.

I think tomorrow's Parliamentary debate will be very reluctant to look "soft on crime" and consider why these riots might be happening. Why decades of social deprivation and institutional racism and cuts to what few bits of social safety net there were might be giving people nothing left to lose by rioting. I hope I'm wrong about that, but if I am it'll have to come from the backbenches.

Footnote

¹ Populist but dangerous and largely useless measures such as water cannon and plastic bullets aside, that is. Because they worked so well in Northern Ireland.

Rape prevention: trying hard to avoid giving out useful information

[trigger warning]

So, here's the second reply on rape prevention from the Equalities Office / Home Office.

Thank you for your interest in the Home Office’s work on sexual violence. We are happy to confirm that the Home Office is currently planning a new communications campaign on sexual violence; work on this will begin in November.

I suppose "will begin in November" is more information than I previously had.

The Home Office collaborates with a number of other government departments on the issue of rape and sexual violence. In particular, but not exclusively, we work closely with the Department of Health, the Ministry of Justice, the Crown Prosecution Service, the Department for Education, and the Department for Communities and Local Government.

Home Office officials have regular contact with the academic community on a variety of issues relating to sexual violence policy. These contacts form a useful part of the policy development process. Officials are always happy to take into consideration any useful research and would actively encourage discourse with anyone who has a research interest which is aligned with the policy area.

I had asked what research they were currently using, of course. Such a vague answer - the second time I've got that sort of vague answer to a fairly specific question - suggests that they may not actually be using any.

I might try using FOI requests instead. (I prefer not to, since they're inconvenient to be on the receiving end of, so I try to make informal requests first)

Anyone else know what this campaign in November is going to be about? Other than somehow about rape and other sexual violence?

Assange's extradition, and what English law actually says about rape

[trigger warning]

So, Assange's appeal against his extradition started today. As with last time, his lawyers are going for a "it wasn't illegal"/"it's only illegal in Sweden because they're weird" approach.

These are expensive lawyers... have they actually read English sexual offences laws?

The Guardian's coverage of the case contains a few very odd statements from the lawyers.

11.27am: In one case Assange is accused of having sex with a woman without a condom – but Emmerson [Assange's lawyer] says deceiving someone on this issue is not illegal under English law.

Yes, it is. Quite seriously illegal. Section 76 of the English¹ Sexual Offences Act 2003 states that it is to be "conclusively presumed" that the "complainant did not consent" if:

(a)the defendant intentionally deceived the complainant as to the nature or purpose of the relevant act;

A "conclusive presumption" is really strong - it basically says that the condition by definition implies the outcome. So if deception were proved in an English court, it would mean that "but she consented" was legally virtually impossible as a defence.

Slightly later:

11.35am: The so-called "minor rape" allegation – when Assange was alleged to have had sex with one of the alleged victims, known as SW, when she was asleep or half asleep – was an "entirely consensual sexual encounter", Emmerson says.

Again, not under English law. Section 75 of the Act states that there is an "evidential presumption" about a lack of consent if:

(d)the complainant was asleep or otherwise unconscious at the time of the relevant act;

and the defendant was aware of this.

An "evidential presumption" isn't as strong as the section 76 "conclusive presumption", but it's still fairly strong - it says that it will be assumed that there was no consent unless evidence can be provided to suggest that there specifically was - a "defence must prove you didn't" rather than the default "prosecution must prove you did" question.

The 11.35 quote also doesn't fit well with some of the other things Emmerson says - for instance

10.50am: The Assange team is promising not to attack his accusers and not to doubt their discomfort about his sexual conduct.

So... it was "entirely consensual sexual conduct" that was "[felt to be] disrespectful, discourteous, disturbing or even pushing at the boundaries of what [the victims] felt comfortable with." (Liss has more on this at Shakesville)

Or later on

12.22pm [...] this is not intended to challenge "the genuineness of their feelings of regret about having had consensual sex with Mr Assange or trivialise their experiences". [...]

[...] But the sexual activities that occurred had taken place with consent, he argued, and, unlike in Sweden, could not be criminalised in the English jurisdiction. [...]

Except that they're saying it wasn't consensual, or there wouldn't be a case to answer here.

And the judge in the original extradition hearing ruled - quite correctly - that under English law the accusations amounted to 3 accusations of rape and 1 of sexual assault.

A brief comparison of Swedish and English sexual offences laws

• English law defines a broader range of assaults as rape. The Swedes are trying to extradite Assange on 1 count of rape and 3 of "sexual molestation". In English law, 3 would be rape, and only one the lesser offence of sexual assault.
• English law also defines, though this is not relevant directly to this case, several types of assaults as "sexual assault" that are not criminalised at all under Swedish law, as far as I can tell.
• English law has far stronger penalties for rape. The average custodial sentence on conviction is 8 years - the maximum a life sentence. The maximum sentence that Assange could serve in Sweden if convicted is only 4 years.
• English law has explicit definitions of consent to say that someone who is asleep did not consent, and someone who was deceived as to the nature of sexual activity did not consent - strong enough that the question of consent should not need to be proved in court if there is no argument about the circumstances. Swedish law, as far as I can tell, does not.

But it's the Swedes who apparently have this ridiculously tough law that criminalises normal sexual behaviour. The fact that English law is in fact tougher - and rightly so - in just about every area doesn't stop people believing this - or Assange's lawyer claiming it in court:

11.31am Emmerson argued that Assange was a victim of a "philosophical and judicial mismatch" between English and Swedish law over what constituted sex crimes.

Such mismatch as there is actually works in his client's favour, at the moment, since the extradition would move him to a jurisdiction with less strict laws and less strong punishments.

Footnote

¹ Wales uses the same Sexual Offences Act. The laws in Scotland and Northern Ireland are different, but I'm not completely sure how. Unless Assange flees to Glasgow, and Scotland then declares independence, it won't become particularly relevant to this case.

Rape prevention: Culture, media and sport

[trigger warning]

So, the first department to reply to my messages about rape prevention policy is the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, who sent me a reply on Thursday.

(This was actually quite a surprise - I was expecting them to be overwhelmed with all the messages they were getting recently about News International and so take longer to reply)

As I'm now coming to find is usual for government departments, it doesn't quite answer the question I asked.

Thank you for your recent email about media regulation.

I appreciate your concerns on this matter, but must emphasise that under current broadcasting arrangements, responsibility for what is broadcast on television and radio rests with the broadcasters and the organisations that regulate broadcasting - the Office of Communications (Ofcom), the BBC Trust and the Welsh Fourth Channel Authority (S4C) - within the overall framework set by the Communications Act 2003 and the BBC Charter and Agreement.

It is a long-standing principle that the Government does not interfere in programme matters, either on arrangements for scheduling or on content. It is important to maintain the principle of freedom of expression which political interference could undermine.

Ofcom, the BBC Trust and S4C are independent of the Government and responsible for safeguarding the public interest in broadcasting. They set out the rules and guidance with which broadcasters must comply. Within this framework, it is the broadcasters' job to make judgments about what individual programmes should contain and the time at which they are broadcast.

You may like to raise your concerns by writing to Ofcom at Riverside House, 2a Southwark Bridge Road, London SE1 9HA.

For printed media, the Government is likewise committed to the effective self-regulation of the press, and believes that maintaining the principle of freedom of expression is fundamental to our democracy. Therefore the Government does not - and cannot - interfere in what a newspaper or magazine chooses to publish. With this freedom, however, comes great responsibility. Newspapers must, of course, abide by the law, but they also sign up to a Code of Practice, overseen by the independent Press Complaints Commission (PCC). The Editor's Code of Practice sets a benchmark for the standards the press is expected to maintain. More information on the PCC and the Editors' Code of Practice, including details of how to make a complaint about a particular article, can be found on their website at: www.pcc.org.uk.

Whilst at present we do not believe that there is a convincing case for further Government intervention in media regulation, we recognise that for the public to have confidence in a system of self-regulation it must be effective and robust. We therefore continue to monitor the behaviour of the press and their compliance with the Code.

Let's leave aside the difference from the normal definitions of "effective" and "robust" required to apply them to the PCC's "regulation" of the press.

Anyway, my reply:

Thank you for your reply to my earlier message.

I agree that the responsibility for what is broadcast or reported in the press rests with the broadcasters and the media, and that the government is rightly cautious about taking actions which could limit freedom of expression. I will contact Ofcom as you suggest regarding these matters.

However, there seem to be some areas in which the DCMS could take action without interfering with commercial and individual freedom of expression.

1. The government - along with other public bodies such as police forces and local government - are major advertisers and producers of media content in their own right. Are there any relevant guidelines for this content and advertising to ensure that it fits in with government rape prevention strategies?
2. In its role as a funder (directly or indirectly) of individuals or organisations media and arts projects, the government could encourage the recipients of this funding to avoid inaccurate portrayals of rape and sexual assault, that condone or glamourise the crimes. This would not be a restriction on freedom of expression - people wishing to condone or glamourise rape would have many non-governmental funding sources still willing to fund them - but would ensure that public money is spent in the public interest, rather than counter to it. Are there any policies of this nature within the department, or in its agreements with the bodies the department commissions to indirectly fund cultural activities?

Again, thank you for your time, and for your prompt response to my initial query at what must be a busy time for your department.

I'll write the letter to Ofcom soon. Here's the Broadcasting Code, which is the guidance that would apply.

A few relevant pieces seem to be:

• Section 2 - I am concerned that "violence" and "sexual violence" are listed as separate categories in paragraph 2.3, but only the condoning and glamourising of "violent [...] behaviour" is restricted under paragraph 2.4.
• Section 3 bans material "likely to encourage or incite the commission of crime". Can they be convinced that material supporting rape culture counts? - there's plenty of research to suggest it should.

The rest of it seems less relevant at an initial glance - are there any bits I've missed?

Assessments of credibility in rape culture

[trigger warning]

One of the things about rape culture is that because the default assumption is that men are always not rapists and women are always lying it becomes very hard to get a fair trial because usual conclusions about witness credibility are completely discarded.

The Strauss-Khan case is - as was predictable from the start in outline if not in details - an example of this.

The news over the last few days has been full of "revelations" that the victim in this rape case is not in fact herself perfect in the eyes of the privileged. As a result of these statements of the obvious, Strauss-Khan has been given bail (because he's considered less of a flight risk if he thinks he can win the case? I don't know...)

I'm making this post on the assumption that the news reporting is accurate. There are plenty of reasons - "unnamed source" "close to the defence" - to believe that at least some of it is rubbish, but I'm going to discuss the scenario in which it's all true.

There's been the usual rape apologism about how clearly if she lied about one thing ever she can't be trusted as a witness and is probably lying about this too. Now, if we're going to exclude anyone who has ever lied about anything from being a witness in a trial, we're going to find both prosecution and defence incredibly short on witnesses ... but it's okay if it's a rape case, because it confirms the belief that women lie about rape. (DSK's own initial lie that he hadn't been there, until the forensic report came back, gets ignored)

There's been quite a bit of effort put in by various writers to point out that this is largely irrelevant, and none of the leaked evidence remotely challenges the statements about what happened in that hotel room. That's true, but I think it goes further than that - these facts about the victim, if true, actually make it more likely that she is telling the truth, by making the alternatives less plausible.

Before these leaks, the scenarios were these:

1. DSK, a man with a reputation for sexual predation, raped a woman in his hotel room, and then attempted to leave the country.
2. DSK was in his hotel room, where he had consensual sex with a woman who had originally turned up to clean his room, who then went to her manager to claim she had been raped by a customer for no explicable reason.

It wasn't looking particularly good already, but if the leaked evidence is true the scenarios are instead these:

1. DSK, a man with a reputation for sexual predation, raped a woman in his hotel room, and then attempted to leave the country.
2. DSK was in his hotel room, where he had consensual sex with a woman, who after finishing her shift went to her manager to claim she had been raped by a customer, despite having numerous reasons to want to avoid drawing police attention to herself.

It hasn't changed the details or plausibility of the scenario where DSK is guilty at all - as has been repeatedly said, this evidence is irrelevant to the key question of "what happened in that hotel room?".

It has quite significantly decreased the - already very low - plausibility of the other scenario. It's not completely impossible, but his defence should have to work very hard to get back to "reasonable doubt". Instead, because of the massively skewed assessments that rape culture provides¹, the case might not even make it to trial now.

Of course, for the various apologists who think "A [vaguely left-wing] man? Commit rape? Impossible!" and have been sticking to that from the start, the calculation is quite different - since one of the scenarios is to them completely impossible, the other can be utterly implausible and still be true.

Footnote

¹ Outside of rape trials, in other areas of the law, this sort of assessment is obvious enough. A man walks into a police station, and reports that the previous night he was assaulted and his coat was stolen.

The police ask for descriptions of the attackers, which he gives, and open a case. It's quite likely at this stage that the attack occurred, but people do occasionally lie in crime reports. Maybe he was at a boxing club, left his coat behind, and doesn't want to tell his friends that's where he was because he'd promised to meet them in the pub that night.

The police then ask if there was anything in the pockets, and he says they contained all the drugs he was going to sell. Not only can drug dealers be mugged just like anyone else (so the fact he's a dealer should be irrelevant in the coming mugging trial), but it makes any theory that suggests he made the report up almost impossible (it was a pretty unlikely theory to start with, of course).

But, of course, rape culture discards all this assessment in favour of "well, obviously she was lying."

Someone in government must be trying to prevent rape, right?

[trigger warning]

As I mentioned earlier, the letter from the Equalities Office regarding the government's rape prevention strategy had several areas I was going to follow up.

I've now sent messages to the various departments I'd earlier identified as potentially relevant, and I'll post again as and when I get replies.

The full text of the letters is below, for reference (long!)

I've gone for writing the letters with the assumption that there is a cross-departmental rape prevention strategy which covers a wide range of areas, informed by the substantial volume of published research on rapists, and treated as a high priority by ministers.¹

If you think I've missed an area of rape prevention that a department should be responsible for - or an entire department - then please let me know and I'll ask them. If you've asked any government departments about rape prevention yourself, could you let me know which ones, and how useful their answer was?

Home Office / Equalities Office

This is a follow-up to their earlier reply.

Thank you for your recent response to my questions. There are a few questions arising from that for which I would like more information.

• You said that "The Home Office is planning a new campaign which will raise awareness of elements of the Sexual Offences Act". Are more details about this planned campaign currently available?
• You said that the Home Office is the lead department regarding rape prevention. Could you tell me which other departments are currently involved in the government's rape prevention strategy?
• With regard to research into the prevalence and taxonomy of perpetrators of rape, you said that the Home Office currently has no plans to commission research in this area. Could you tell me what pieces of existing research in this area the Home Office is using to inform its rape prevention strategies?

Education

I am following up a conversation with a representative of the Home Office on the topic of the prevention of rape. While the Home Office has lead responsibility for this, there seem to be several areas within your department that would be covered by a governmental rape prevention strategy, and I would like to know more about the specific actions being taken by the Department of Education on this issue.

As you will be aware, numerous surveys have found that teenagers are at high risk of sexual assault and rape perpetrated by other teenagers. Could you please tell me what actions the department has taken to ensure that:

1. All children receive appropriate teaching in consent and related issues (not necessarily solely as relates to sexual activity), to reduce the likelihood that they will commit rape or other sexual offences either as a teenager or as an adult, and to reduce the prevalence of common myths about rape among children and young adults.
2. Teenage perpetrators of sexual offences are dealt with as befits the seriousness of the offence, and the urgent need to prevent reoffending.

In addition, could you tell me what research the department uses to inform its policy regarding the prevention of rape and effective education on consent issues, and if applicable what additional research the department has commissioned or intends to commission.

Culture, Media and Sport

I am following up a conversation with a representative of the Home Office on the topic of the prevention of rape. While the Home Office has lead responsibility for this, there seem to be several areas within your department that would be covered by a governmental rape prevention strategy, and I would like to know more about the specific actions being taken by the Department on this issue.

As Lord McNally stated (Hansard HL Deb, 24 May 2011, c1682)

"I agree with the noble Baroness that it is time to publicise the seriousness of rape, and I think that that could be started in the schools and by looking at some of the worrying things in advertising, in pop music and in some of the newspapers [...] Some of those should look at where they put the position of women in society and whether they encourage young men to give women the respect that they should have."

As the department responsible for many of the areas mentioned in Lord McNally's speech, could you please tell me what steps the department is taking in the following areas:

1. Encouraging private media and creative industries to refrain from producing or distributing creative works which condone, normalise or minimise rape and sexual assault, promote myths about rape, or otherwise work against the government's strategy of rape prevention.
2. Ensuring that publicly-funded media, advertising, and creative works do not condone, normalise or minimise rape and sexual assault, promote myths about rape, or otherwise work against the government's strategy of rape prevention.
3. Encouraging accurate and myth-free reporting of both specific rape and sexual assault trials and the general prevalence of rape and sexual assault, and discouraging the sensationalising of this reporting.

Defence

I am following up a conversation with a representative of the Home Office on the topic of the prevention of rape. While the Home Office has lead responsibility for this, there seem to be several areas within your department that would be covered by a governmental rape prevention strategy, and I would like to know more about the specific actions being taken by the Ministry of Defence on this issue.

Could you please tell me what steps the Ministry is taking in the following areas:

1. Given the widespread use of rape as a weapon of war, what is being done to protect civilian populations in areas in which UK forces are involved?
2. Studies such as McWhorter 2009 [1] show that a significant proportion of military personnel have themselves committed rape. What steps does the MoD take to detect these people to reject them during recruitment and to protect fellow soldiers and civilians from them if they remain undetected at the recruitment stage?

Additionally, could you tell me if the MoD has any plans to commission research similar to McWhorter's, and what existing research in this area it already uses.

[1] Reports of Rape Reperpetration by Newly Enlisted Male Navy Personnel by Stephanie K. McWhorter, et al., published in Violence and Victims, Vol, 24, No. 2, 2009. The study found that around 13% of male new recruits to the US Navy had attempted or committed rape, many on multiple occasions.

Justice

I am following up a conversation with a representative of the Home Office on the topic of the prevention of rape. While the Home Office has lead responsibility for this, there seem to be several areas within your department that would be covered by a governmental rape prevention strategy, and I would like to know more about the specific actions being taken by the Ministry of Justice on this issue.

While, obviously, the Ministry has a major role to play in the conviction, imprisonment and possible rehabilitation of rapists and other sex offenders, to reduce the number of future offences that they commit, I am also interested in what steps the Ministry is taking in the following areas:

1. Ensuring that prisoner education and rehabilitation includes programs intended to reduce sexual offending, including those prisoners who were not arrested for a sexual offence.
2. 2) Preventing rape and sexual assault within the prison environment.
3. 3) Working to rehabilitate those sexual offenders whose detected offences do not merit a custodial sentence so that they do not commit more serious sexual offences later in life.

I would also be interested to know what research on the behaviour and taxonomy of rapists and other serious sexual offenders the Ministry uses to inform its policies in these areas.

Footnotes

¹ Also, a pony.

An ineffectual response for the scale of the problem.

[trigger warning]

Last month I asked the Government Equalities Office what the government was doing to prevent rape.

For reference, I asked them:

• what campaigns to prevent rape and/or to discourage people from choosing to rape has the Equalities Office recently run or have planned?
• what other government departments have or will soon run campaigns with similar aims?
• what recent studies the Equalities Office has commissioned or is aware of concerning the motivations, psychology and methodology of rapists in the UK, and what, if any, future studies you intend to commission?

The relevant(ish) bit of the reply is as follows:

Turning to the issues you have raised in relation to public awareness about the severity of the offence of rape, the Home Office takes the lead within government on communications campaigns on rape and sexual violence. The last campaign was run in 2006 and concentrated on the issue of consent in the context of the Sexual Offences Act (2003), which was introduced in 2004. Further campaigns have been run more recently by individual police forces; a current example of this is the joint Thames Valley Police and Hampshire Constabulary campaign: `Don't Cross the Line' - www.dontcrosstheline.co.uk. The Home Office is planning a new campaign which will raise awareness of elements of the Sexual Offences Act as recommended by Baroness Stern in her recent review of the statutory response to rape in England and Wales.

The Home Office does not currently have any plans to commission any specific research on the taxonomy of perpetrators of rape. However, officials are in regular contact with the academic community and are always prepared to engage in active consultation on issues which relate to sexual violence policy.

Not unsurprisingly, the answer is "very little". I can't help feeling that if most other crimes with a potential life sentence - and a substantial average sentence - were being perpetrated by around 5% of the population, there might be a greater sense of urgency around dealing with them than a few rare awareness campaigns mostly reliant on the initiative of individual police forces¹.

For a rough numeric comparision, using an offence of equivalent sentencing, imagine that the government was aware of a plot by the residents of Wales - yes, all of them - to drop a nuclear bomb on London. An awareness campaign that civilian possession of nuclear weapons is illegal and carries a potential life sentence might be considered to be a little ineffectual as the response.

The question of what recent studies they are aware of regarding perpetrators appears to have been ignored, too. I'm hoping that's just an oversight in replying to my questions, rather than an intentional omission because they aren't aware of any, but on previous form I'm not hopeful.

I'm going to send a few follow-up letters - to the departments named in my previous post to see what they're doing and suggest that they start; to the Home Office to find out more about this planned campaign; and to the Equalities Office to see if they are aware of existing research. As usual, I'll post the letters here after I've sent them.

Footnotes

¹ While some police forces are definitely trying to deal with rapists as effectively as possible, others are ultimately siding with the rapists through inaction. The best-performing forces have a report:conviction ratio over ten times better than the worst-performing forces.

As Baroness Stern said (in far more academic and Parliamentary language than my paraphrase, of course): "If you actually paid any attention to the existing recommendations it would be a big help."

Crime statistics? Now why would journalists understand those?

[trigger warning]

So the BBC has an article on the number of women who have been convicted for domestic violence. It's as bad as you'd expect a BBC article to be.

It notes a rise in convictions of women for domestic violence between 2005 and 2010 from 1,500 to 4,000.

The article then goes on for several paragraphs speculating about why this might be, cultures of violence in women, etc.

In the final paragraph, after most readers will have got bored and wandered off, they note that in the same time period convictions of men committing domestic violence rose from 28,000 to 55,000 - not quite as large a proportionate rise, but still big.

Further penalty points, too, for their heteronormative assumption that all domestic violence is committed against someone of the 'opposite' gender to the attacker.

Domestic violence reduction is actually a relative success for our justice system and government - with the rates of assault significantly falling, and the rate of convictions significantly increasing. It remains a serious problem - around 300,000 incidents a year - but this is a third of what it was 15 years ago, and a vastly-increased proportion (now around 1 in 6) of those perpetrators are convicted (even if not all of them get appropriate sentences).

It's still really bad and there's much still to do - but there has been significant progress made. Not that you'd know that from this article.

Lots of quotes from un-named "some experts", too - presumably because no real expert would actually put their name to such uninformed speculation.

Here's the complaint that I sent them.

Regarding your article "Women's convictions for domestic violence 'double'", I found it to be poorly researched and sensationalist, leaving a key piece of context for the final paragraph, and ignoring obvious research that could easily answer some of the "experts say this" / "other experts say that" pseudo-debate in the article. By doing so, it gives a completely misleading impression, both about the extent of domestic violence generally, and the number of women committing it.

Firstly, convictions are not at a measure of the prevalence of crime. A doubling of convictions could mean twice as many crimes were being committed, or it could mean that the number of crimes was constant but the reporting rate had doubled, or it could mean that the reporting rate was constant but improvements in police and CPS procedure meant that the chances of a conviction had doubled. Or - more likely - some combination of the three.

Fortunately, the British Crime Survey is a long-standing statistical measure of crime, including domestic violence, and - together with other CPS and Police/Home Office statistics - can be used to answer this. A quick summary of the figures can easily be found by searching for "BCS Domestic Violence" - http://www.dewar4research.org/DOCS/DVGovtStatsAug09.pdf for instance

It shows that - far from increasing, the rates of domestic violence against both men and women have been generally decreasing. The proportion of victims who were male is also roughly the same as it has been over the last decade.

Secondly, the key piece of context - that there had also been a massive increase in convictions for domestic violence in general and by men specifically - is left for the last paragraph. This is a key piece of context, which strongly suggests that much of the increase is due to improvements in prosecution and investigation - contrary to the suggestions in the early paragraphs - and yet it is buried at the bottom of the page where relatively few readers will see it.

This news of a massive increase in convictions for men is not accompanied by "some experts" wondering if it is part of a "growing culture of violence" among men - despite the 2005 number for men being seven times the 2010 number for women.

Thirdly, the article assumes throughout that all male victims of domestic violence were attacked by women, and vice versa. This is obviously not the case, but the article implies it anyway.

Please let me know what steps will be taken to ensure that such basic mistakes in reporting on crime statistics do not recur in future.

Journalists downplay rape prevalence in DR Congo

[trigger warning]

Several news sources are reporting on this study on rape prevalence in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The headlines are all along the lines of "48 rapes per hour" or "1100 rapes a day". Here's the BBC article.

My first thought on reading the headline? "That's really low." Somewhere between study, press release and news article, they've lost some really important details.

The "shocking" figure they quote is - while absolutely terrible - only a fraction of the real problem.

The UK is a similar size to the DRC, in terms of population (62 million and 67 million respectively). Going from British Crime Survey data, my low bound for the number of rapes annually in the UK is around 200,000. It's a low estimate because the BCS data doesn't cover children or people aged 60 or over, but it gives a rough estimate.

The reporting claims the figure for the DRC to be around 400,000. Worse, even accounting for the slightly higher population, but not much worse.

"UK: 20 rapes every hour, study finds" would be an equally accurate headline (and perhaps expressing it like that might shock a few people into action).

The figure for the DRC is considerably higher - not just twice as bad as the UK

1. The study, according to the article, only covers women and girls aged 15-49. Like the BCS, that misses out a lot of people (and, indeed, the authors of the study acknowledge this)
2. The figure of just over 400,000 is not how many rapes occurred, but how many women were raped in the last 12 months. Like the BCS, it doesn't measure multiple victimisation. Given that the lifetime estimate is only four times higher, there must be a lot of multiple victimisation going on.
3. They also note a figure of over 3 million women experiencing "intimate partner sexual violence", though the abstract doesn't say whether this is lifetime or annual. It's not quite clear how this figure relates to the initial count, but from the Guardian reporting it seems to be a separate figure, and includes yet more rapes. Not at all surprising - but imagine how much better the UK's figures would look if they only counted stranger rapes; now think about what that implies for the DRC figures.
4. Unlike the BCS, the figures this study were based on don't appear to have had the same effort put into avoiding reporting stigma (Dr Peterman explicitly mentions this as a cause of underestimation).

Add all that together and this study is still a massive underestimate.

It's also a big increase on previous estimates - which says a lot about those estimates.

That rate is significantly higher than the previous estimate of 16,000 rapes reported in one year by the UN.

If anyone at the UN actually believed that figure - again, only about twice the number reported in the UK - to be remotely accurate, they would have been congratulating the DRC on its successful strategies against sexual violence. Clearly, no-one actually did - the UN staff are not naive! But again, it's measuring something completely different - and the DRC government points out that the difference between the two figures is due to reporting and collection, not a change in the number of actual rapes.

But I don't think the journalists get just how high rape prevalence is in countries like the UK, or they wouldn't print things like (BBC):

The highest numbers of rapes were found in war-ravaged North Kivu, where an average of 67 women out of 1,000 have been raped at least once.

...which, back of envelope, makes North Kivu noticeably safer than the UK. Or it could be - as the authors of the study state - a severe underestimate.

If UK journalists - and the public as a whole - were actually aware how many rapes took place in their own country, then they might not have to have the obvious underestimates here pointed out to them - underestimates that make the DRC's problems with rape look nowhere near as bad as they actually are.

In an effort to get the reporting to be more accurate, here's the message I sent to BBC Complaints - I also sent a similar one to the Guardian regarding their article (to reader@guardian.co.uk). I didn't even get into the extra 3 million, since I wanted to keep the initial complaint short. I'll mention it if they get back to me.

Dear Editors,

Your article reported that "A study by US scientists has concluded that an average of 48 women and girls are raped every hour in the Democratic Republic of Congo.". The study actually concludes something far worse than this - the figure of 400,000 a year from which the hourly rate is derived is the number of women and girls raped at least once in the last twelve months. Dividing this into hours forgets that many will be raped far more than just once. Furthermore it ignores the statements made - and reported on - by Dr Amber Peterman that the estimate from their study is likely to be a significant underestimate.

This becomes obvious when you consider the comparable rate for the UK. The British Crime Survey finds that around 70,000 people between the ages of 16 and 59 have been raped at least once in the last twelve months. Studies on multiple victimisation suggest that many rape victims are raped more than once, for an estimate of around 200,000 rapes each year in the UK - or around 20 every hour.

Similarly, your article gives a lifetime victimisation rate for the worst area - North Kivu - of 67 in 1,000 - a rate that is actually somewhat less bad than the equivalent rate for women in the UK.

I'm not suggesting that rape in the UK is as prevalent as it is in the DRC - though "UK: 20 rapes every hour, studies show" is a horrifying statistic in its own right - but by doing a simple division your headline and article actually hides the true scale of the problem in the DRC.

Please correct the article - especially the headline and lede paragraph - to better reflect the original study.

Yours faithfully

[me]

False allegations - response to CPS consultation

[trigger warning]

The Crown Prosecution Service are holding a consultation on the prosecution of false allegations of rape. My own response is copied below - Laura Woodhouse at The F-Word has more background information and Women Against Rape have a response to which they are inviting additional signatures.

The deadline for consultation submissions is tomorrow (6 May) so there's not a lot of time if this is the first you heard about the consultation. (Government consultations such as this are not well publicised, and this isn't the first time I've missed or nearly missed something I wanted to comment on)

Here's my response. Most of it covers the 'public interest' criteria for prosecution. Quick summary if you don't want to read the lot - I believe it's basically never in the broader public interest to prosecute, even if it appear to be in the narrow public interest when only looking at a particular case.

I had [stronger trigger warning] this Shakesville post about a recent US case in mind for a lot of what I wrote, and one of the references is taken from comments there.

Question 1

The description of perverting the course of justice is clear.

Question 2

In paragraph 15 - for reasons I discuss more fully in my answer to the following question, I believe that for there to be evidence of a false allegation there needs to be far more than simply a lack of evidence of a rape.

To have victims of rape who are considering reporting second-guessing themselves as to whether the evidence they have is strong enough to prevent a charge being placed against them is fundamentally unjust, and as paragraph 13, and the recent Home Office study on attrition [1] point out, there are many reasons that a victim might later decide that they do not wish a prosecution to proceed.

Since a retracted allegation is not therefore sufficient evidence in this case of the initial allegation being false, I believe that prosecutors would need to look for affirmative evidence that no rape occurred, rather than for a lack of sufficient evidence that a rape occurred - the latter, of course, being all too common for true reports of rape for it to be used as evidence of falsity.

Question 3

Regarding the public interest factors set out in the consultation document, I believe that there is a major factor missing for consideration, under which a prosecution would only rarely be within the public interest.

Rape and sexual offences, as is known from the British Crime Survey and many other sources, are rarely reported to the police in the first place. Distrust of the police and/or courts is cited as a common reason for not reporting.

Kelly's 2001 literature review for the CPS [2] refers to research by Jordan into recorded false allegations, which found that:

[...] within the file analysis were three cases that were designated false reports which subsequently turned out be assaults by serial offenders. Additional analysis of one serial rapist case showed that an early report by a young woman who named her attacker had been discounted as a false report; the man was convicted of 24 rapes eight years later.

Prosecuting a suspect who has been deemed to have made a false allegation is therefore extremely risky. Should the allegation be true, and have been retracted under duress, or - as has led to prosecutions recently - been deemed false by the police or CPS without a retraction, then to prosecute that suspect firstly revictimises them again, and secondly leaves a rapist free to rape again.

Furthermore, the idea that a victim can report rape - as victims are encouraged to do by the police - and then end up facing trial herself, is utterly abhorrent, and serves as a severe deterrent to reporting. There are very few other crimes - including those where false reports are more common - where people would find themselves scared away from reporting the crime for this reason.

The public interest test therefore needs to be considered more generally. The ultimate public interest of prosecuting crimes is that future crime is deterred and reduced. Rape is a far more common crime than perverting the course of justice through false allegations of rape. It is also - despite the maximum sentences being identical - a more serious crime.

It might be possible, taking a single case in isolation, to conclude that it is in the public interest to prosecute someone for making a false allegation. However, because of the particular contexts in which rape occurs and in which accusations of rape are investigated and prosecuted, it is not sufficient to consider that case in isolation.

If by prosecuting a case, one successfully punishes the maker of a false report - but by doing so, deters even one other person from reporting their own rape, and so leaves a serial rapist free to commit several further crimes - Weinrott and Saylor [3] found that convicted rapists on average had committed ten times as many rapes as they were eventually prosecuted for, as well as numerous lesser violent crimes.

It would therefore be very hard indeed to argue that the prosecution was in the interests of the public as a whole.

That prosecutions relating to false allegations of rape (but not false allegations of other crimes) are regularly reported in the press means that the likelihood of such a prosecution having a deterrent effect are extremely high.

Hundreds of thousands of rapes occur in the UK each year. Mere hundreds of false allegations are made, and those in which a suspect is named by the accuser are much rarer - arrest or charge of a suspect based on a false allegation is rarer still. Even a tiny deterrent effect could therefore let a significant number of rapists go undetected.

In addition to this, of course, the high-profile reporting that false allegations receive feeds in to the common belief among many members of the public that false allegations are commonplace. This attitude and culture is something that the CPS already have to work against. By prosecuting a false allegation case, prosecutors may be directly increasing the difficulty of the - already difficult - task their fellow prosecutors have in prosecuting rape cases. Again, this is difficult to justify as being in the broader public interest.

A consideration of whether prosecuting the case could increase the likelihood of other rapes being committed, other rapes remaining undetected, and rapists being difficult to prosecute successfuly - causing great harm to the general public interest - should therefore be weighed against the local public interest served by prosecution of an individual case.

Question 4

The explanation of "double retraction" is clear. However, under the circumstances described in paragraph 26, I am unable to think of a situation in which a prosecution would be in the public interest, for the reasons of the matter of logic stated within that paragraph.

An example of a case where prosecution might be in the public interest is perhaps needed here.

Question 5

Given the likelihood of a prosecution having wider repercussions beyond the narrow public interest of prosecuting a particular case, and the difficulties therefore caused in achieving justice for future victims of rape, I believe that the interim measures described in paragraphs 29 and 30 (referral to the Director of Public Prosecutions) should be made permanent.

These cases are extremely rare, but the need for oversight at the highest level is clear.

References

1. A gap or a chasm? Attrition in reported rape cases. Kelly, Lovett and Regan, 2005.
2. Routes to (in)justice: a research review on the reporting, investigation and prosecution of rape cases. Kelly, 2001
3. Self-Report of Crimes Committed by Sex Offenders. Weinrott and Sayler, 1991