Attrition in Rape Cases. Developing a Profile and Identifying Relevant Factors

Lea, Susan; Lanvers, Ursula; Shaw, Steve W

doi:10.1093/bjc/azg583

Cited by 44 publications

(64 citation statements)

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“…With a conviction rate as low as 7% (Home Office and Ministry of Justice data, 2013) -one of the lowest in Europe (Lovett and Kelly 2009) -one might argue that in England and Wales rape is effectively "decriminalized" (Gregory and Lees, 1999: 91). Research has sought to establish not only the extent of the attrition, but also the factors that explain it (Grace et al, 1992;Harris and Grace, 1999;Gregory and Lees, 1999;HMCPSI and HMIC, 2002;Kelly, 2002;Lea et al, 2003;Jordan, 2004;Kelly et al, 2005;Brown et al, 2007;HMCPSI and HMIC, 2007;Lovett et al, 2007;Daly and Bouhours, 2010;Stern, 2010;Hester, 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Complaints of rape and the criminal justice system: Fresh evidence on the attrition problem in England and Wales

Hohl

Stanko

2015

European Journal of Criminology

150

156

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Citation: Hohl, K. & Stanko, E. (2015). Complaints of rape and the criminal justice system: Fresh evidence on the attrition problem in England and Wales. European Journal of Criminology, 12(3), pp. 324-341. doi: 10.1177/1477370815571949 This is the accepted version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Permanent AbstractThe UK has one of the lowest conviction rates for rape in Europe. This article presents unique evidence on the factors that influence the attrition of rape allegations in the English criminal justice system. The study is based on a large, representative sample of rape allegations reported to the London Metropolitan Police, the UK's biggest police force. The dataset contains unprecedented detail on the incident, victim, suspect and police investigation. The results lend support to the influence of some rape myths and stereotypes on attrition. These findings suggest that further central factors include the ethnicity of the suspect as well as what police officers and prosecutors perceive as evidence against the truthfulness of the allegation: the police record noting a previous false allegation by the victim, inconsistencies in the victim's account of the alleged rape, and evidence or police opinion casting doubt on the allegation.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Complaints of rape and the criminal justice system: Fresh evidence on the attrition problem in England and Wales

Hohl

Stanko

2015

European Journal of Criminology

150

156

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“…The joint inspection of Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) and her Majesty's Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate (HMCPSI) into the investigation and prosecution of rape offences in England and Wales deemed that 164 allegations out of 1,379 were false allegations of rape (11.8%; [11]). In the study conducted by Lea et al [14] no clear statistics were reported. But, based on the information provided by the researchers we calculated that 38 out of 379 (10%) allegations of rape were considered to be false.…”

Section: Outdated Figuresmentioning

confidence: 93%

“…Four studies on the prevalence of false allegations in general were published in the 21 st century [11][12][13][14]. The joint inspection of Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) and her Majesty's Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate (HMCPSI) into the investigation and prosecution of rape offences in England and Wales deemed that 164 allegations out of 1,379 were false allegations of rape (11.8%; [11]).…”

Section: Outdated Figuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…More recent figures on the prevalence of false allegations of rape are lacking, because although the studies were published in the 21 st century, the data gathering process was conducted in the 20 th century for three out of four studies [11][12][13][14] gathered the data more than ten years ago. The most recent data in the study were from 2002.…”

Section: Outdated Figuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Prevalence of False Allegations of Rape in the United States from 2006-2010

Zutter¹,

Horselenberg²,

Koppen³

2017

J Foren Psy

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False allegations constitute a public problem since they result in a waste of time spent by the police and justice departments, and may cause public and individual harm. A prevalence study was conducted to obtain recent and valid figures of the prevalence of unfounded allegations of rape and unfounded allegations of other crimes. The most recent published prevalence figures on false allegations in the U. S. are from 1992. At the time cases were cleared by labeling cases as unfounded crimes. Since then guidelines to label a case as unfounded have become more strict. To test whether the new guidelines issued by the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program of the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) were followed we compared the current results with the prevalence rate of false and baseless allegations of rape before the guidelines were issued. Over a five-year period, from 2006 until 2010, the prevalence of false and baseless allegations of offences in the U. S. was studied. We found that the new guidelines were followed by law enforcement agencies. We performed a Kruskal Wallis Non Parametric Chi Square test of Goodness-of-fit on the proportions of false and baseless allegations to test whether the proportions were equal for all offence types. False and baseless allegations were not equally distributed across offence types X 2 (7, N=8000)=120.19, p<0.0001. The post hoc test revealed significant differences with the group average of 1.16% for false and baseless allegations of murder X 2 (1, N=1000)=39.94, p<0.0001, false and baseless allegations of rape X 2 (1, N=1000)=171.94, p<0.0001, and false and baseless allegations of robbery X 2 (1, N=1000)=187.78, p<0.0001. Approximately 5% of the allegations of rape were deemed false or baseless. That was at least five times higher than for most other offence types.Keywords: Crime; Allegations; True; False; Rape; FBI; Unfounded The Prevalence of False AllegationsNot all allegations of crimes are truthful. Sometimes people who present themselves as victims make false claims of victimization. A false allegation is defined as an allegation of a crime filed by a complainant to the police while in reality no crime has occurred, the complainant is not a victim of the alleged crime.False allegations constitute a public problem since they result in a waste of time spent by the police and justice departments, and may cause public and individual harm. It seems imperative to know the prevalence of a problem in order to contain or solve the problem. In other words, the prevalence is a prerequisite to outline an effective policy to eliminate false allegations as much as possible.False allegations of rape, in contrast with other offence types, received a lot of attention from scholars. There is a heated debate about false allegations of rape with extreme claims at both ends. Brownmiller [1] claims that almost all allegations are true, and Kanin [2] that all allegations are false.Whereas Greer [3] claims Brownmiller's false rape figure is untrue since this figure was not based on...

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“…Feist, Ashe, Lawrence, McPhee & Wilson, 2007;Kelly, Lovett & Regan, 2005;Lea, Lanvers & Shaw, 2003;Lees, 2002). Despite this, there remain challenges to obtaining convictions, particularly where consent (or its absence) is the core issue, such as when the complainant and defendant have some degree of prior acquaintance.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

What constitutes a “reasonable belief” in consent to sex? A thematic analysis

Gray

2014

Journal of Sexual Aggression

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Attrition in Rape Cases. Developing a Profile and Identifying Relevant Factors

Cited by 44 publications

References 1 publication

Complaints of rape and the criminal justice system: Fresh evidence on the attrition problem in England and Wales

Complaints of rape and the criminal justice system: Fresh evidence on the attrition problem in England and Wales

The Prevalence of False Allegations of Rape in the United States from 2006-2010

What constitutes a “reasonable belief” in consent to sex? A thematic analysis

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