6-25-17:
The Coroners Report, “Test case shows how viewpoints about a death can differ” (Herald, June 2), presents a misinformed perspective of the hypothetical death of a woman because of its focus on an erroneous statistic about sexual assault.
Dr. Carol Huser wrote, “I’ve read that around 40 percent of rape allegations turn out to be false.” Reporting statistics in this manner is ethically and professionally irresponsible. There was not a cited source for this statistic; it comes only from the an opinion of the author, not education or research.
Future jurors, lawmakers and community leaders read authoritative articles such as this. Ironically, the community then gets frustrated when rapists are not given prison time or even arrested.
The reality is that statistics of false reporting are notorious for being inaccurate. Please read, “False Reports: Moving beyond the issue to successfully investigate and prosecute non-stranger sexual assault,” published by the National Sexual Violence Resource Center.
The article discusses both the research done to address false reporting and the damage that can be caused by defaulting to the possibility of a false report when working with a rape survivor.
The authors write, “to date, [ours] is the only research conducted in the U.S. to evaluate the percentage of false reports made to law enforcement. The remaining evidence is therefore based on research conducted outside the U.S., but it all converges within the same range of 2 to 8 percent.”
Clearly, this is not Huser’s uncited 40 percent. ..Continued..
Showing posts with label ( .News-Statistics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ( .News-Statistics. Show all posts
June 25, 2017
West: Inaccurate statistics skew views on rape
January 1, 2017
December 30, 2016
New Bureau of Justice Stats
Jail Inmates in 2015
Correctional Populations in the United States, 2015
Prisoners in 2015 (several references to sex crimes, and stats in Tables 5 and 8). From page-3:
Total prison population
State and federal prisons had jurisdiction over an estimated 1,526,800 prisoners at yearend 2015, a more than 2% decrease (down 35,500 prisoners) from yearend 2014 (table 1). Federal prisoners made up 13% of the total U.S. prison population at yearend 2015.
The decrease in the number of U.S. prisoners from yearend 2014 to 2015 was similar to the decrease that occurred between 2011 and 2012 (down almost 2%). The 2011–2012 decline coincided with California’s Public Safety Realignment Policy, which diverted newly sentenced nonviolent, nonserious, and nonsex offenders from state prisons to serve time in local jails and under community supervision. With the commitment by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2015 to reduce the number of nonviolent drug offenders held in federal prisons, the BOP began releasing more nonviolent drug offenders from prison in 2015.
January 22, 2015
Federal Justice Statistics, 2011–12
Describes the annual activity, workloads, and outcomes associated with the federal criminal justice system from arrest to imprisonment, using data from the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS), Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys (EOUSA), Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts (AOUSC), and Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP).
Tables and text describe arrests and investigations by law enforcement agency and growth rates by type of offense and federal judicial district. This report examines trends in drug arrests by the DEA.
It also provides the number of offenders returning to federal prison within 3 years of release and includes the most recently available data on sentences imposed and their lengths by type of offense. ..Highlights..
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