While I don't wish to prolong what could be a rather unpleasant thread I feel I
must inject a note of caution here. I saw an article recently (on the BBC
website if I remember correctly) that made it clear that comparing figures for
any crime between jurisdictions has to be done very carefully. This is
because each jurisdiction has it's own reporting/calculating rules and they are
often very different. Adding in successful prosecution figures confuses things
even more. To give an example and keep on-topic for the thread it seems that
the Swedish rules state that if a complainant states 'my boyfriend has raped me
every night for the past year' then that gets recorded as 365 rapes. This is a
major part of what makes Sweden seem to be 'the rape capital of the
world'. However what really makes the rules daft is that even if the
prosecution is successful and all alleged incidents are covered by the charge it
is only recorded as 1 prosecution - thus there is inevitably a vast mismatch
between complaints and convictions. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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