Crime and Punishment

Humza Yousaf defends rape trial scheme as boycott grows

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The government has said there is "overwhelming evidence" juries are affected by preconceptions about rape.​

So what, I think that everyone has preconceptions about rape.

And that of course includes our learned friends, the judges.

I am unconvinced that a single judge sitting alone would never let preconceptions or emotions cloud their judgement.

And I am dissappointed with the Scottish justice system, bearing in mind what happened with Alex Salmond and Craig Murray.
 
1 in 100 rape reports result in a charge, let alone a conviction (context:UK).

That this doesn't cause disquiet is baffling to me. I assume this, because the status quo is somehow never a big deal to those who may (rightfully) be perturbed by changes in trial system.

It could be that juryless trials are a terrible idea but we're kind of already deep in the terrible sooooo?????? Perhaps the burden should be on offering a better solution. At all. Within the past 30 years. Or ever.
 
1 in 100 rape reports result in a charge, let alone a conviction (context:UK).

That this doesn't cause disquiet is baffling to me.

It could be that juryless trials are a terrible idea but we're kind of already deep in the terrible sooooo??????
I'm not sure that juryless trials are the answer though.
Dedicated properly funded and trained sexual crimes police squads (like we had before the Tories cut police funding) and not allowing the defence to use the victims sexual history against them seem like better first steps.
 
It could be that juryless trials are a terrible idea but we're kind of already deep in the terrible sooooo??????
So we should devise a test to try and determine the difference in false positive and false negative rate in jury and judge lead trials, and how this varies by case type. If this would help answer that, or another of the critical numerical questions that arise from this proposal it could be a good idea. I just do not see how this could usefully answer the question, compared to a controlled trial that does not put people's liberty at stake.

If this was a clinical trial I would say they have gone straight for a phase three trial without an appropriate control group, rather than starting with phase one and two (if this theory is even ready for that). If anyone suggested such an experiment in my field they would laughed at.
 
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Rare as it is for me to call for custodial sentences, but I cannot believe this is only a fine of $15k/child

Harrowing photos released by the US labor department taken at a slaughterhouse plant in Nebraska show the conditions more than 100 children faced while illegally working for Packers Sanitation Services Incorporated (PSSI) before the department cracked down on the company for violating child labor laws.

The pictures show employees covered in protective gear, using chemicals to spray down and sanitize equipment. In some of the pictures, made public on Sunday by the television news show 60 Minutes, some of the employees appear to be young children, wearing protective face glasses and holding buckets.

In February, the labor department fined PSSI $1.5m for employing at least 102 children ages 13 to 17 across 13 meat-packing plants in eight states. The fine amounts to $15,138 for each child, the maximum penalty under federal law. The Wisconsin-based company is one of the largest food sanitation companies in the US and is contracted by meat plants to sanitize facilities. The company says it works with more than 725 partner plants.

The department started its investigation into PSSI in August 2022 after a middle school in Grand Island, Nebraska, notified police that a 14-year-old student came to school with acid burns on her hands and knees. The girl told staff that she was working night shifts at a local slaughterhouse plant. Teachers also noticed that other students were falling asleep in class after reportedly working at the plant at night.

“It seemed to be known within the community that minors either are or were working overnight shifts. They told us about children that were falling asleep in class, that they had burns, chemical burns. They were concerned for the safety of the kids. They were concerned that they weren’t able to stay awake and do their job, which is learning in school,” Shannon Rebolledo, a labor department investigator, told 60 Minutes.

When the labor department visited the plant – which is run by the meat producer JBS and is one of the largest beef production plants in the country – during the night shift, they “noted the difference in the appearance of these workers” that were coming in for the late shift.

“They were little,” Rebolledo said. “They looked young.”

Rebolledo told 60 Minutes that she believes the hiring of children “was the standard operating procedure”.

“There is no way this was just a mistake, a clerical error, a handful of rogue individuals getting through. This was the standard operating procedure,” she said, adding that she believed “the number [of children who were working] is likely much higher” than what the department ultimately found.

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Such is the perverse incentive in hiring illegal aliens: employers can threaten them with deportation if they don't do what is demanded of them. Something I don't think is considered as much as it should be.
 
"He then advised detectives he went back outside and observed people running away from his property, at which time he began shooting at them and unknowingly hit the girl."
this is an awful look. he might as well have just said "i hit her on accident during an unjustified shoot/murder attempt on those other people". that's...not a very sturdy defense.
In the most recent figures, conviction rates for rape and attempted rape were 51%, compared with 91% for all other crimes.

Obviously litteraly yes, in that the false negative rate of the justice system is non-zero. This story indicates (and I have little doubt) that the false negative rate of rape cases is significantly higher than many other crimes (hence the conviction rates for rape being 51% and the total 91%). I have however not seen that effect analysed as one would expect in for example the biomedical field.
between these, which % is closer to cases which were actually "proved beyond reasonable doubt"? false negatives and positives are both common in the process. i am not convinced we should seek to err more towards false positives. we frequently see criminal/felony convictions with 0 forensic evidence, merely one person (or sometimes a few) claiming that something happened. we observe this in a system where law enforcement is allowed to lie to suspects and pressure them into saying things they otherwise would not, sometimes out of fear of having a full crime falsely pinned on them.

we should also expect different conviction rates based on nature of crimes. some are simply more likely to leave forensic evidence that can support allegations than others. sexual assaults are particularly difficult in cases where "consensual encounter then lie about it" and "was assaulted" have every observable piece of evidence look identical other than what the people in question say. to say there's no "reasonable doubt" in cases that literally come down to two people making mutually exclusive claims with no supporting evidence is a reach. very different from "only one person's dna was found on a murder weapon and that same person had the motive/means".

even so, 91% "beyond reasonable doubt" sounds incredibly high. maybe they're just filtered/dropping ones that don't have the evidence for those though.
1 in 100 rape reports result in a charge, let alone a conviction
are those formal police reports made under penalty of perjury? i'm not sure how it works in uk, but that seems pretty low.
Dedicated properly funded and trained sexual crimes police squads (like we had before the Tories cut police funding) and not allowing the defence to use the victims sexual history against them seem like better first steps.
sexual history may or may not be relevant to the case, for either prosecution or defense. for example, "we had consensual sex routinely for years then i was raped right before we begun a custody battle over children" is a different context to "this person i know from work drugged me". preventing the former from coming into evidence is almost certainly injustice...while sexual history/body count in the latter example is completely irrelevant.
 
are those formal police reports made under penalty of perjury? i'm not sure how it works in uk, but that seems pretty low.
There was something going on, I am not sure of the details but there is an incentive for to keep conviction rates high so anything doubtful was dropped. For many reasons, possibly including those you mention along with the patriarchy, that means dropping lots of rape cases. Getting rid of that incentive would seem like a safer start that getting rid of trial by jury.
 
Getting rid of that incentive would seem like a safer start that getting rid of trial by jury.
i think eliminating this incentive completely is impossible. not sure how much it can be reduced.

if you don't believe there's at least a decent chance of conviction, it doesn't make sense to take it to trial. doing that is costly at baseline, even if you don't further increase it with extra financial incentives. if you look at a criminal complaint and there's no evidence being put forth against the defendant other than an allegation...*should* this make it to trial? it's not clear to me that it should. not only is that costly, but it invites false positives and gives incentive to secure false convictions.
 
i think eliminating this incentive completely is impossible. not sure how much it can be reduced.

if you don't believe there's at least a decent chance of conviction, it doesn't make sense to take it to trial. doing that is costly at baseline, even if you don't further increase it with extra financial incentives. if you look at a criminal complaint and there's no evidence being put forth against the defendant other than an allegation...*should* this make it to trial? it's not clear to me that it should. not only is that costly, but it invites false positives and gives incentive to secure false convictions.
Here is an article about it:

Thousands of rape cases may have been dropped due to hidden CPS 60% conviction rate target

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has admitted to imposing set conviction targets on staff, which may have created a “perverse incentive” to not charge on complicated rape cases.

Law Gazette made the discovery after noticing references to incentives on the service’s inspection reports, and found targets were imposed on staff between 2016 and 2018. The CPS admitted they were “not appropriate” and may have acted as a “perverse incentive”, deterring prosecutors from pursuing more complicated cases.

The undisclosed targets encouraged prosecutors to achieve a 60 per cent conviction rate in rape cases, leading to accusations that “weaker” cases, ones in which conviction was less assured, were dropped more readily in order to create better-looking results.

The CPS and Ministry of Justice’s own figures showed that while rapes reported to the police had gone up up by 173% between 2014 and 2018, the number of cases charged and sent to court was down by 44%.
 
Thousands of rape cases may have been dropped due to hidden CPS 60% conviction rate target

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has admitted to imposing set conviction targets on staff, which may have created a “perverse incentive” to not charge on complicated rape cases.
oh, i see. yeah, i can't see how setting a conviction rate target will lead to a better outcome rather than a worse one. i didn't realize they were doing that.

i still think that even if you remove actively harmful policy, you'll still have at least some selective pressure to pursue cases that are more likely to secure convictions than less.
 
oh, i see. yeah, i can't see how setting a conviction rate target will lead to a better outcome rather than a worse one. i didn't realize they were doing that.

i still think that even if you remove actively harmful policy, you'll still have at least some selective pressure to pursue cases that are more likely to secure convictions than less.
Yeah. It it easier to convict on petty crimes than more serious ones. It is also easier to plea bargain out petty crimes rather than more serious ones. A conviction rate standard flips the system upside down - encouraging prosecutors to take cases to trial that she be plea bargained and thus reducing the resources dedicated towards prosecuting more serious offenses.
 
wrt sexual history and rape allegations:

last season, buffalo bills punter was accused of gang raping an underage girl at a party (actually, this came out long before he was drafted, but no charges). once he was sued civilly, the bills cut him.

since then, we get some more information about this case:
  • the girl snuck into the party uninvited with friends and lied about her age
  • she was apparently not subtle about multiple sexual encounters, including at that party, per witnesses...there was no evidence at the time that anything was done against her will, and evidence that she was doing things consistent with her will
  • very importantly for the punter in particular: he left ~hour before the alleged incident took place...seems like an important detail. one he probably told his team, and one they disregarded.
this is probably why people there weren't charged criminally in the first place. from my perspective, the girl committed what should be a felony with non-trivial penalties. it costs the accussed a tremendous amount of money in addition to reputation hit. they are effectively punished, severely, long before the trial even starts. numerous people condemned the guy before waiting for facts, which is both typical and pathetic. i am not convinced that her sleeping with multiple people at this party and openly talking about it is "irrelevant" to the likelihood that she was raped at the same party. it seems to at least somewhat inform an estimate of what actually happened there.

the bills betrayed/backstabbed their guy, and look bad as an organization no matter how you slice it. they were willing to draft him while knowing the allegations...but not retain him once the allegations became public but before the legal process played out --> there is no *good* conclusion about their motivations given this sequence of choices. if they didn't believe the allegations were true, they're backstabbing cowards for cutting him over them becoming public. if they did believe they were true but drafted him anyway, only to cut him when it became public knowledge...that's not exactly a good or honest look for the organization either.
 
wrt sexual history and rape allegations:

last season, buffalo bills punter was accused of gang raping an underage girl at a party (actually, this came out long before he was drafted, but no charges). once he was sued civilly, the bills cut him.

since then, we get some more information about this case:
  • the girl snuck into the party uninvited with friends and lied about her age
  • she was apparently not subtle about multiple sexual encounters, including at that party, per witnesses...there was no evidence at the time that anything was done against her will, and evidence that she was doing things consistent with her will
  • very importantly for the punter in particular: he left ~hour before the alleged incident took place...seems like an important detail. one he probably told his team, and one they disregarded.
this is probably why people there weren't charged criminally in the first place. from my perspective, the girl committed what should be a felony with non-trivial penalties. it costs the accussed a tremendous amount of money in addition to reputation hit. they are effectively punished, severely, long before the trial even starts. numerous people condemned the guy before waiting for facts, which is both typical and pathetic. i am not convinced that her sleeping with multiple people at this party and openly talking about it is "irrelevant" to the likelihood that she was raped at the same party. it seems to at least somewhat inform an estimate of what actually happened there.

the bills betrayed/backstabbed their guy, and look bad as an organization no matter how you slice it. they were willing to draft him while knowing the allegations...but not retain him once the allegations became public but before the legal process played out --> there is no *good* conclusion about their motivations given this sequence of choices. if they didn't believe the allegations were true, they're backstabbing cowards for cutting him over them becoming public. if they did believe they were true but drafted him anyway, only to cut him when it became public knowledge...that's not exactly a good or honest look for the organization either.
What does this have to do with her past sexual history though. from what you said the case should've been dismissed without looking at her sexual history, just from looking at the event where the alleged incident took place.
 
What does this have to do with her past sexual history though. from what you said the case should've been dismissed without looking at her sexual history, just from looking at the event where the alleged incident took place.
unless you don't count her conduct *that day* as history, her behavior prior to the incident in question can and should inform the likelihood that the incident happened without her consent.

while the punter was unjustifiably screwed, there were other people involved in that incident too. there should be a non-trivial difference between these two fact patterns:
  • person was brought to party/event and not soliciting sex.
  • person sneaks into party and literally asks people to run a train on them or w/e.
unless you have direct evidence like video footage (unlikely and itself not advisable) or other people there to witness a sexual assault, it is at the fundamental level a question of one person's word against another's. while past behavior isn't always relevant to a particular case, making a blanket statement that it should never be used is advocating for injustice, not justice. how relevant it is depends on the nature of the case and allegations. it is completely irrelevant if physical assault w/o consent is observed. it is not so irrelevant when you have two people making claims about what happened behind closed doors after the fact.

unless you're advocating to toss out all claims with the latter fact pattern? i don't think that's what you were going for, but if we disregard "he said she said" situations entirely, then history would be irrelevant. otherwise, credibility of accuser and accused are literally all you have, and their past behavior should matter...

side note:

a guy's texts prior to a murder allegation are somehow hard evidence that he "hunted" someone who literally walked up and drew a gun at close range...so much so that many posting here and a "jury of peers" (lol) was willing to convict based on prior behavior, rather than the *confirmed* sequence of actions at the scene!

but a woman's past conduct, both before and at the party somehow can't *possibly* inform us of what's more likely in a now known to be false rape allegation? the hypocrisy is heavy. the former case is like witnessing rape and disregarding it because of her previous conduct. the latter is claiming that previous conduct is irrelevant.

taking both of those positions is not coherent!

You've got to cover all the bases. It didn't happen, but if it did, it wasn't his fault.
that's a very government-like statement. that said, the punter literally wasn't there, so it's objectively true. "even if it happened" it would not be his fault any more than it would be your fault personally. you kind of have to be in the vicinity to commit that particular crime.
 
unless you don't count her conduct *that day* as history, her behavior prior to the incident in question can and should inform the likelihood that the incident happened without her consent.

while the punter was unjustifiably screwed, there were other people involved in that incident too. there should be a non-trivial difference between these two fact patterns:
  • person was brought to party/event and not soliciting sex.
  • person sneaks into party and literally asks people to run a train on them or w/e.
unless you have direct evidence like video footage (unlikely and itself not advisable) or other people there to witness a sexual assault, it is at the fundamental level a question of one person's word against another's. while past behavior isn't always relevant to a particular case, making a blanket statement that it should never be used is advocating for injustice, not justice. how relevant it is depends on the nature of the case and allegations. it is completely irrelevant if physical assault w/o consent is observed. it is not so irrelevant when you have two people making claims about what happened behind closed doors after the fact.

unless you're advocating to toss out all claims with the latter fact pattern? i don't think that's what you were going for, but if we disregard "he said she said" situations entirely, then history would be irrelevant. otherwise, credibility of accuser and accused are literally all you have, and their past behavior should matter...

side note:

a guy's texts prior to a murder allegation are somehow hard evidence that he "hunted" someone who literally walked up and drew a gun at close range...so much so that many posting here and a "jury of peers" (lol) was willing to convict based on prior behavior, rather than the *confirmed* sequence of actions at the scene!

but a woman's past conduct, both before and at the party somehow can't *possibly* inform us of what's more likely in a now known to be false rape allegation? the hypocrisy is heavy. the former case is like witnessing rape and disregarding it because of her previous conduct. the latter is claiming that previous conduct is irrelevant.

taking both of those positions is not coherent!


that's a very government-like statement. that said, the punter literally wasn't there, so it's objectively true. "even if it happened" it would not be his fault any more than it would be your fault personally. you kind of have to be in the vicinity to commit that particular crime.

At least in a British court what occurred at the event where the alleged crime took place wouldn't be considered sexual history. That would refer to past sexual relationships and behaviour..

The man in question wasn't charged and from what you're saying the civil case against him didn't go anywhere. Seems like it was the Buffalo Bills and not the judicial process that treated him badly.
 
At least in a British court what occurred at the event where the alleged crime took place wouldn't be considered sexual history. That would refer to past sexual relationships and behaviour..
hmm, seems we thought about different things when reading the term. i would include both past relationships/behavior and "relations"/behavior earlier that day in the person's "history".

i would say past relationships can matter too though. consider the earlier example i brought up: someone makes a rape allegation very close to the start of a custody battle (or after it starts), with a 5+ history with that same person w/o incident. that doesn't necessarily mean the assault didn't happen...

but can you honestly say this fact pattern wouldn't inform your predicted likelihood of the allegation? would you give it the same estimated probability of being true as a drugging + date rape allegation? what about the man's prior behavior in either case? would you disregard knowing the first man had no past incidents at all, while the second previous history of assaulting women? past relationships/behavior still irrelevant to your predicted likelihood?

remember, w/o other evidence to go on, estimated likelihood is all we have, especially in civil cases where the burden is "more likely than not". do you believe the fact patterns above align to identical rates of the assault allegations being true?

Seems like it was the Buffalo Bills and not the judicial process that treated him badly.
the bills certainly treated him badly. were it just the bills, but no. you pay a lot of time and money to that system as part of the "judicial process". quite a few people dragged his reputation through the mud, though it would be difficult to pin down defamation there it will have an effect.

more broadly, prior arrests can screw you out of employment regardless of convictions too. thus if one of these makes it to trial, good luck in the future.

and remember, that "system" saw fit to allow a lawsuit against someone who was a) never even charged and b) delayed until he had money. the worst conduct in this case by far is the false accuser. but i'm not sure the bills are actually worse than the courts with regard to how they treated him.
 
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