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GrinningFool • today at 2:48 PM • 1 reply • view on HN

The criterion for being considered false accusations in that table seems to be 'no charges filed'. Even in those cases, the disclaimers are pretty strong:

> The police continue to misapply the "no-crime" or "unfounded" criteria.

> It is impossible to "discern with any degree of certainty the actual rate of false allegations" because many of the studies of false allegations have adopted unreliable or untested research methodologies.


Replies

roryirvine • today at 5:10 PM

In the UK, charges can only be brought if there is sufficient admissible, credible, and reliable evidence to provide a realistic prospect of conviction.

It's a fairly high bar - it's not simply a matter of the alleged victim deciding to "press charges" as is sometimes portrayed in the media, and is subject to significant external oversight (it's not just the police who are involved).

So "no charges filed" is very very different to "unfounded" in the UK, which rather casts doubt on any part of this table which is conflating the two.

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