Wednesday, January 30, 2013

British Rape Rates

This is a spreadsheet of crimes detected in England/Wales 2010/2011. There were 54,982 sexual offenses reported, but this web site belonging to a UK rape crisis group indicates that the British Crime Survey indicates about 80,000 rapes per year. (As in United States, there are many rapes not reported to the police, which show up in surveys of victims.) The current United Kingdom population is 56.1 million.  That would mean about about 142 rapes/100,000 population.

 Table 1 of Uniform Crime Reports for 2011 shows the United States has a reported to police rape rate of 42.8/100,000 rapes. The 2010 National Crime Victimization Survey shows 188,380 rapes in the U.S.; the U.S. population in 2010 was 308 million.  That gives 61.16 rapes per 100,000 population, our about 43% of the British Crime Survey victimization rate.


I certainly will not claim the United Kingdom has more than twice the rape rate because American women are allowed to own guns while British women for practical purposes are not, but it does make you wonder, doesn't it?

UPDATE: A reader says that the British Crime Survey figure that RapeCrisis uses is, not contrary to their claim, a count of rapes, but all sexual assaults (which would include unwanted touching of a sexual nature).  I don't find that claim implausible, because groups that call themselves whateverCrisis are not generally terribly objective, but RapeCrisis make a clear distinction between sexual assaults in general and rape in particular:
Around 400,000 women are sexually assaulted and 80,000 women are raped each year (British Crime Survey).
Worse, the reader who makes this claim cites a document that does not seem to support his claim.

10 comments:

  1. Wikipedia lists Britains rape rate, from UN charts, at 28.8/100,000 -- which means U.S. rate is just less than double UK rate.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_statistics#UN_Rape_Statistics

    Is there an apples to apples comparison?

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  2. It would be helpful to have a breakdown of rapes by state and county in the US as that might shed some light. For example are there more rapes in areas where gun laws are more restrictive.

    I didn't see that info anywhere in the links provided so I guess that isn't available?

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  3. Having just returned from England (my first time there in over 25 years) I can attest that guns or lack of same are not what is driving the rate of sex crimes.

    Just look to some other nations like Sweden, Norway, Netherlands... and you'll see similar increases in sexual assaults.

    And the common denominator is that which shall go unnamed else one is accused of being Islam-phobic...

    Regarding England, I used to absolutely love the country. When I first toured the country in the 1970s, it and it's people were magnificent, good and friendly.

    But wow, what a difference a few decades of engineered multiculturalism makes...

    Much of London (and other big/medium cities) is rapidly becoming uninhabitable by all but the Islamically-correct.

    I first encountered such colonization in Paris when I unknowingly booked one night at a hotel in a suburb of Paris near De Gaulle airport so as I could catch the TGV the next morning.

    I was attacked by three "youths" when I asked directions to the train station.

    Fortunately, they were not prepared for a guy that teaches police and military how to defend themselves... But I was lucky too and I am grateful that I made it out in one piece.

    I have no plans to return to Europe anytime soon. Too bad, it used to be a very civilized place.

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  4. NationMaster compiles statistics from such sources as the CIA World Factbook, United Nations, World Health Organization, World Bank, World Resources Institute, UNESCO, UNICEF and OECD. It appears, a significant reason people don't report crimes in the UK is their justice system, they are ranked the highest in a comparison of 30 nations for acquittal. You pointed out rape victims but "assault" victims which this survey categorizes separate has the UK at 2.8% of their population whereas in the US it's 1.2%. These are stats never mentioned in the gun control debate.

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  5. Do you think it might have anything to do with Muslims?

    http://historyscoper-islamwatch.blogspot.com/

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  6. "Wikipedia lists Britains rape rate, from UN charts, at 28.8/100,000 -- which means U.S. rate is just less than double UK rate.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_statistics#UN_Rape_Statistics


    Is there an apples to apples comparison?" - Ed Darrell

    Why not your link for apples to apples, as this is 2003-2008 UN data on the Wiki site.

    Rounded to nearest whole number...

    2003 US 33/100,000 2008 US 27/100,000

    2003 UK 25/100,000 2008 UK 29/100,000

    Looks like 2003 US was over UK, and UK has increased as US decreased putting UK over US now.

    The apples to apples from your link doesn't have US at double UK...

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  7. http://www.heuni.fi/Satellite?blobtable=MungoBlobs&blobcol=urldata&SSURIapptype=BlobServer&SSURIcontainer=Default&SSURIsession=false&blobkey=id&blobheadervalue1=inline;%20filename=Hakapaino_final_07042010.pdf&SSURIsscontext=Satellite%20Server&blobwhere=1266335656647&blobheadername1=Content-Disposition&ssbinary=true&blobheader=application/pdf

    Figure 5.

    Apples to apples, not grapes to grapefruit.

    FBI survey includes only penetrative rape. UK crime survey asks about the much wider scoped "sexual assault" which includes touching. Probably explains the difference.

    Sad truth is that a woman trying to pull a gun during a rape is more likely to have it snatched from her and used by the rapist to get her compliance.

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  8. Jan: I don't find implausible the claim that the UK Crime Survey included more than just rape; I just couldn't find the UK Crime Survey itself, only a secondary reference that claimed 80,000 rapes.

    However: figure 5 of the document that you linked is about homicide rates, not rape rates.

    I should point out that the claim that a woman will be disarmed by the rapist is widely believed in some circles, but there is simply no evidence for this, other than the widely held belief that women are shrinking violets, incapable of using deadly force in self-defense. We do have a bit of data on this, and it disproves this sexist assumption.

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  9. There is a second figure 5 in that document, in the section about rape. But it again does not provide the evidence that the UK Crime Survey includes more than rape. I don't find the claim implausible; I just haven't found it yet.

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