Wednesday, January 31, 2007

RE:porting losses

Neither of these two examples are to do with the environment, but both happened today and gave me further cause for concern on standards of reporting. Which always gest me going.

The first was on rape. Unless I misheard, the problem seemed to be that only 1 in 20 reports ended in a conviction. This is of course pretty awful, unless only 1 in 20 were proven beyond all reasonable doubt to have been a rape. In which case I get a tad concerned for all single men (and a few married ones) if a target ends up needing meeting no matter what. I did gather some sloppy police procedure is at the heart of the critique and the % figure, but in the slot I watched very little was allowed for 'proven innocent until guilty'. It just seemed assumed and accepted that this figure was not high enough. What is suggested? Forget whether a crime has been committed and go straight to 75%?

The other was about the Birmingham terrorist alert. Some guys have been arrested for allegedly plotting to kidnap a soldier, and was heralded under the banner "Is terrorism taking a more sinister turn?'. What, exactly, could be more sinister than sidling up to a mum and baby in a Tube and trying to blow them up?

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