Since it's now the Roaring 20s again, we must revive Art ...

I suspect I've just nuanced myself out of a BBC telly interview (Big Questions on BBC 1 if you must know). They want to do a show on the Sarah Everard murder, so there's the inevitable focus on crime rates and how to increase conviction rates for rape. Nuance included the following: 1. Male violent crime rates are nine times higher than female violent crime rates. Black male violent crime rates in London are eight times higher than white male violent crime rates in London. The prime age of female victimhood is 15-19; the prime age of male perpetration is 15-25. Smaller, more conventionally attractive women are at greater risk. 2. When women say they can't tell the difference between a cat-caller & a rapist, they're engaging in accurate stereotyping, but if you grant women that pass you have to grant it to people who can't tell the difference between a conservative Muslim and a terrorist, or a Pakistani Muslim who is a bit clueless because of his religion and a kiddy-fiddler. 3. The reason for this is because not only are the stereotypes about male criminality statistically accurate, so are the stereotypes about Muslim terrorism, Pakistani kiddy-fiddling, and Afro-Caribbean involvement in gangs/county lines. 4. The minor behaviour from men that women dislike (sexual harassment on the tube, wolf-whistles, leaning out of car windows and yahooing, etc) isn't perpetrated, as a general rule, by the same men who commit rape and murder. The Venn diagram overlap is tiny. 5. But, of course, there are exceptions. I also explained the link between patterned offending like animal cruelty and flashing and the tendency to "scale up" to serious assaults, rape, and murder. New research indicates that some perpetrators of these related offences engage in both minor and major crimes of this type at the same time. 6. I then discussed copying France and applying an objective test to the accused's behaviour in rape cases, rather than the "reasonable belief in consent" widespread in common law countries. This is a Roman law legacy that generates higher conviction rates. 7. And then had to point out immediately that bringing different principles across from the other great legal system can be like introducing foxes and rabbits to Australia, or grey squirrels to the UK. And I analogised that by noting the mess the EU's lawyers had got themselves into when contracting with a UK university (Oxford) and a UK company (AstraZenica) for the purposes of vaccine procurement. Fixing this problem is really, really hard. And lot of it involves enforcing laws already on the books, not enacting new ones.

More from Helen Dale

More from Helen Dale

More from Helen Dale

More from Helen Dale

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