The British government monitors its citizens every movement with the largest network of closed-circuit television cameras in the world. At the same time, this:
In Britain, a nation whose justice system has been used as a model around the globe, government officials and women's activists agree that rape goes largely unpunished.
Solicitor General Vera Baird, who oversees criminal prosecutions in England, estimated that 10 to 20 percent of rapes are brought to authorities' attention. According to government figures, 14,000 cases a year are reported and 19 out of 20 defendants walk free.
That's a 5% conviction rate. (In the United States, it's 13 percent, but not much better.) Let's just pause: That means in the U.K., out of a minimum of 70,000 rapes a year, 56,000 victims don't even bother to report the crime. Of the 14,000 who do report it, only 700 see their attacker(s) get punished.
About 25 percent of reports of assault and 75 percent of homicides lead to someone being found guilty. In the 1970s, the rape conviction rate ran at more than 30 percent. The difference now is that there are far more "date rape" cases ... .
It is illegal in Britain to interview jurors -- even after a verdict. But public opinion polls show that a sizable proportion -- a quarter to a third -- of Britons say a rape victim is responsible for the attack if she is drunk or wearing "sexy" clothes.
"As many as one in two young men believe there are some circumstances when it's okay to force a woman to have sex," said Conservative Party leader David Cameron, citing studies. ...
Until a few months ago, prosecutors were barred from interviewing victims and met them only on the day of the trial.
Ken McDonald, the head of the Crown Prosecution Service, called this restriction "mad." He said it dated back centuries to the days when witnesses stuck straw in their shoes outside courtrooms to indicate their testimony could be bought.
Clearly, the problem here is conservatism, in two senses: The culture's clinging to traditional notions of acceptable female behavior, and the law's inability to catch up with the times on such a thing as witness interviews.
Note also how the U.K.'s lack of a constitution harms crime victims in this instance: It is illegal to interview jurors, even after a case. In the U.S., that kind of law would be flatly forbidden as unconstitutional prior restraint of the press. If you had a full-on press inquiry into why particular jurors acquitted particular defendants, you could expose the sexism underlying the verdicts.
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