Women and crime statistics - increase in sex crimes?

[shedalight]

Daily mail article:

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5465541/Record-number-women-convicted-sex-crimes-Britain.html

Some 142 women were guilty of sex offences in 2016 – almost double the 74 convicted two years earlier and more than triple the number at the start of the decade

There's a disgraceful rise in the number of adults working in schools convicted of abuse. I wonder whether there are any other reasons for this increase. Might those familiar with crime statistics have an idea?

I do wonder if some of the increase is driven by women assisting men in e.g. making pictures of child abuse

The point is we don't know so we can't look into it.

Whether this is a egnuine increase in crime by women, more women getting reported and caught, or it's being driven by TIMs.

The whole point of stats is analysis. If you throw away the male / female definition, then you are unable to do analysis by sex.

Who does this benefit is the question, it was obvious this was going to happen, feminists have been flagging it for years.

Anyone who rapes anyone has some serious mental issues, why is it so hard to believe that women are capable of it too?

I was 11 when I lost my virginity to a 17 year old girl. The difference is I never reported it, as a boy you just don't. It's maddening that the general conclusions that people draw is that women are perfect angels and if they did something wrong or messed up, it was because a man made them do it.

I'm not belittling anyone else's experiences by the way, I wouldn't. Things ARE a mess, I'm never going to argue that.

“It's maddening that the general conclusions that people draw is that women are perfect angels and if they did something wrong or messed up, it was because a man made them do it.”

That is not what is being said. The fact is that in law in England and Wales, rape requires a penis. So a woman convicted of rape must be a woman with a penis.

Vegeetas I am sorry for what happened to you. I agree that women can do awful things too, but the point is that if In the future there is a big increase in women committing a certain crime, it would be useful to know why.

If women are becoming more violent, it would be useful to know this so the reasons could be investigated and something done in response.
Just as if the amount of fraud committed by those within a certain age range drastically increased, it would be worth investigating why.

Widening the definition of "woman" for statistical reasons will make it much harder to recognise changing patterns of behaviour and offending. What is the point of collecting stats at all if they are rendered meaningless by nebulous definitions?

What if someone told you that you weren't necessarily assaulted by a woman, because for all you know she now identifies as a man? That person would be a dickhead, and it would be an appalling thing to tell you, but some rapists have claimed to be a different gender/sex.

Quentin that report says she was jailed for manslaughter. They failed to reach a verdict on the aiding and abetting of rape. So it doesn’t look like that is one of the six cases.
The statistics are from the Ministry of Justice, so I’ve been looking at their published statistics and reporting on the government website. All their figures are for England and Wales. IE rape will mean only with a penis or by joint enterprise. The offender history for rape between 2009-12 shows the percentage of females offenders as 0. It does state that the figures are only for incidents with one offender and that incidents with more than one offender are not included, it doesn’t say where those statistics can be found unfortunately. The statistics are manifold, convoluted and I cannot find offender history stats for the period to 2016, they don’t seem to have been recorded in the same way. It is interesting to note that the stats for the period up to 2012 identify offenders by ‘Sex’ (male and female). The stats for the period to 2016 seem to all refer to ‘Gender’. They do not state whether, for the purpose of reporting, Sex and Gender have the same criteria.

That's horrible vegeetas and I agree that women can, and do, do some heinous things, including to children, and of their own volition. Being female does not make you incapable of committing sex crimes.
I know a man who has a similar story, except he was 13 and she was in her 20s. It messed him up, in part because he felt he should have been proud of it, and not ashamed and disgusted, which is how he felt.
So I hope noone is trying to make excuses for women who are guilty.
The thing is though, stats have DOUBLED. In 1 year. I am prepared to believe that a small part of that is increased reporting (which would be a good thing) but increased reporting would be a gradual increase.
It's so important to know if the "gender" is the thing being recorded, rather than the sex.

"Anyone who rapes anyone has some serious mental issues, why is it so hard to believe that women are capable of it too?"

This is utter rubbish.

Most rapsists are "normal" men who act opportunistically.

This is reflected in society in all the ideas around "what did you expect". It is in fact often framed as normal for a man to rape or sexually assault a woman or girl over a certain age if he gets the opportunity.

My rapists have both been perfectly normal men with no mental health issues whatsoever.

Who the fuck do you think you are making statements like that on a website like this? You think women don't know what rapists are like?

Pathetic.

" The difference is I never reported it,"

WTF?

Women and girls rarely report.

Such a tone-deaf post and really offensive.

Judas - she pleaded guilty to rape by joint enterprise and manslaughter right at the start of the fresh trial she was supposed to face (having been acquitted of murder and no verdict on rape) and was sentenced for both. You can see sentencing here:

www.judiciary.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/julie-beards-sentencing-remarks-20161207.pdf

So she will have been on of the 6.

mirialis
Ah I see. The linked article didn’t clarify which charge she’d pleaded guilty to. Anyway, the point I was trying, and failing, to make was that the stats make it clear they do not include incidents with more than one offender but then do not go on to show those that do include more than one offender (which presumably is what joint enterprise would fall under). So it’s difficult to guess what it is the ‘six’ figure represents in terms of the stats from MOJ, single offender, multiple offenders, or both.

Yes I found it all very confusing which is why I looked it up. The article says she was charged with aiding and abetting rape and murder by joint enterprise and I still am not clear whether she was convicted for rape or for aiding and abetting rape, though in the sentencing comments the judge refers to rape.

If you read the sentencing comments for Steven Beards:: www.judiciary.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/steven-beards-sentencing-remarks-20160526.pdf

and for Julie Beards as linked above, it's an appalling and heartbreaking read and you can see why the first jury acquitted her of murder and could not come to a decision on the rape.

No, as a pp suggested I most certainly do not think that all women are angels and if they did something bad then a man made them do it, but in this instance I would say that is the case (not that she was an angel but that a man made her do it).

No normal person rapes another. Cut that how you will. No normal person kills another either. People that do that stuff DO have something wrong with them. I am and have always been a man and the thought of harming another sexually or violently sickens me. That is how a normal person works generally.

To clarify when I said about not reporting it, I typed out of turn and should have said that I should have reported it but didn't. Sorry for any confusion ;-)

Lots of very “normal” men ( men,not people, men) do rape though.

I understand the point Vegeetas is trying to make. The word "normal" may mean different things to different people, but a discussion on the semantics could easily fill a thread of its own without adding anything of value to this one.

The idea that only monsters rape is one of the ideas that acts to the detriment of rape victims, it is part of the narrative that makes it so hard for juries to convict.

Many men who rape don't even see it as rape.

Society does not see rape as always a monstrous act, sometimes it is seen as perfectly understandable for a man to do it.

These are basic truths.

In times of civil unrest, war, natural disaster, etc, many many men rape. They do it because they can. Or because the people they are with urge them to. Because it becomes the norm.

There are different levels of rape in different societies - this is not because men are somehow different, more monstrous in some societies than in others. It is becasue of how society views rape and rapists and their victims.

These are basic truths.

All of my sexual assaults and rapes were ‘normal’ men.

Normal men, who felt entitled to do as they please, viewing me only as an object.

And not feeling any guilt, because in their eyes, they hadn’t done anything wrong.

Vegeetas, for what you have been through. I have known several men who are rape victims (in their case the perpetrators were other men) and on a moral level, I can see why you would want to count what was done to you as rape rather than sexual assault.

However, here we are using the legal definition of rape in order to get a handle on the way official statistics are being distorted and in fact rendered meaningless by gender self ID. Rape is one of the few offences which because of its legal definition means that it is very hard to cover up the fact that the vast majority of the perpetrators (barring, as pointed out, a tiny minority of women prosecuted under common purpose) are unequivocally, unquestionably biologically male.

As for the "have to be mentally ill to rape", sadly not. The work of American criminologist David Lisak is very interesting in this respect. He uses questionnaires with questions like "have you ever had sex with a woman who has said no, and you've gone ahead by physically restraining her?" (i.e. questions describing situations which meet the legal definition of rape, but don't use the actual word "rape"). He finds about 6% of American male college students (his chosen study group) will admit to actions meeting the legal definition of rape. (When he repeats the questionnaires with the word "rape" overtly in the questions, 5% will admit to being rapists).

Sadly it's not a tiny minority of mentally ill men, and it certainly isn't monsters - this is a sizeable minority (1 in twenty - two or three or four in every busy railway carriage you've ever been in). And they look normal. For the most part they act normal. They probably help old ladies across the road sometimes. They may have offered to get milk for a housebound neighbour during last week's snow. They're probably respected in their workplaces. They vote Tory... and Labour and LibDem and Green. They wouldn't dream of kicking a puppy. They may well run half marathons for cancer research. They maybe give up Saturday mornings to help at their sons' sports clubs. But they still rape.

Well in that case and all things considered I am pleased to be abnormal lol :)

It's maddening that the general conclusions that people draw is that women are perfect angels and if they did something wrong or messed up, it was because a man made them do it.
To me what is maddening is that women are rarely viewed as people, neither angels nor devils.

Joint enterprise is the term of law that I was wondering about when I commented earlier. I worked in the criminal justice system in the eighties and it was not unusual in DV cases involving children for the man to go to mental health treatment, because the judges believed as Vegeetas does, while the wife or partner is charged with the same crime (joint enterprise) because she did not stop him and was not viewed as mentally ill.
It is important to remember that prosecutors and LEOs can have a surprising effect on statistics by the choices they make and the trends they set within their extended community.

Exactly bewilderedness. Women are neither angels or devils, they are just humans.

I don't think I looked at MN when Margaret Atwood said "Am I bad feminist?" but I agree with her:

"My fundamental position is that women are human beings, with the full range of saintly and demonic behaviours this entails, including criminal ones. They're not angels, incapable of wrongdoing. If they were, we wouldn't need a legal system"

Reading the sentencing remarks for Julia Beards is absolutely heartbreaking: A woman of an IQ "less than 70", deemed unable to interpret situations and communication properly, who'd been sexually abused by her father, sexually abused by her husband and probably drugged through the process of her husband's violent rape and murder of another woman with learning difficulties. This was a woman in her 30s whose sources of pleasure were pushing dolls round in a pram and watching children's Disney movies and who had been assessed with the mental age of someone circa 9 years old.

Rape involves penetration however 3 women were recently convicted of rape of a man for using objects.

No they weren't. They were convicted of sexual assault and found not guilty of assault by penetration.