False accusations should be punished with the same penalty as the accuser tried to put upon the innocent. Until that happens, people will see no reason to stop false accusations that they think will help them.
- true accusation - punish the perpetrator
- false accusation - punish the accuser
- unable to confirm either way - nothing happens
I still don't understand why some people have so much trouble with this concept and want to bias towards "guilty until proven innocent" thinking.
And yes, I know that in civil cases in the US, it's "preponderance of the evidence" and not "presumption of innocence". It still means you should get punished only if your deed is proven (in Bayesian sense) more likely to be true than false.
Witch hunts are exciting. It's also empowering to believe that you're one of the "good guys", going after those dastardly "bad guys".
TBH, it's the same thinking behind any pogrom. "Those people" are rich, so breaking in and stealing everything is on the side of justice. "Those people" have secret cabals which rule the world, so it's OK to abuse and attack any individual you see.
The people with that attitude aren't aware of history. That attitude has been tried before in many countries. The end result is genocide.
It doesn't start out that way. But the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
> suggests an obvious
> course of action
It does happen, but it's so rare that it generally makes headlines when it does.
http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/04/28/how-many-...
The rate for those sentenced for lesser crimes is likely much higher, due to plea bargaining ("plead guilty to petty theft or we'll charge you with grand theft").
That's not really what we're talking about here, though. We're talking about the rate of conviction of those who are proven conclusively to have lied resulting in someone else being convicted of a crime.
Generally such people receive no consequences at all.
For instance, as far as I know the woman in this case:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Rape_on_Campus
has not been charged with anything, despite falsely accusing an entire fraternity house of rape.
I still don't understand why some people have so
much trouble with this concept
From there it's a simple question of our willingness to let the guilty go free vs. our willingness to see the innocent wrongly punished. This is known as Blackstone's Ratio [1] and it dates to the 1760s.
Needless to say, there's a certain political equilibrium here; if you'll let off 1000 guilty people to avoid 1 wrongful conviction, you'll have a thousand victims and their families campaigning for tougher punishments for every 1 wrongfully convicted person campaigning in the opposite direction.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_formulation
Also, note - you mention filing charges. But the problem with sexual harassment cases is, they don't even get to that level. It's usually enough to "file charges" on a blog and post it to Twitter to do 90% of damage.
> It cuts both ways
Nonsense.
Corrupting the justice system should be punished to the fullest extent of the law. How can you have justice when the justice system goes along willingly with abuse?
There are cases where claimants are proven beyond any doubt to have lied. Lied knowingly, egregiously, and with malice aforethought. The idea that those people should be let off with a polite smile of "we don't want to put off the real victims" is horrific.
I think the misunderstanding is that you think I'm saying insurance claims are equal in scope to sexual assault. That is (TBH) ridiculous. To the extent of deliberate blindness.
What I'm actually doing is making a statement about the fraudsters. Not the victims.
FALSE sexual assault charges do not involve sexual assault. False sexual assault charges do not have real victims. So false sexual assault charges are, in fact, entirely equivalent to false insurance claims. Both are false. Both do not involve real victims.
Your reaction comes across as an un-thinking knee-jerk "OMFG sexual assault is bad"... to the point where we can't have a rational discussion about anything related to the subject.
Look, there are fraudsters. See "Jackie" at the University of Virginia. Or the Duke Lacrosse case. In both situations, "wishful thinking" people came damned close to lynching the accused, facts be damned. And in both cases, every single aspect of the claimants story turned out to be provably false.
You have an implicit claim that sexual assault is somehow magical, and deserving of different standards than insurance fraud. All possible evidence shows that this attitude is not just wrong, it is actively dangerous. It denies reality. It denies justice. It hurts innocent people.
For the crime of perjury to be proven, you also need more. Substantive proof of lying, not just 'the guy did not get convicted'.
I don't think there is a chilling effect when you use a standard of proof to admit a claim of fraud.
But for matters adjudicated by universities, it's possible that neither of these apply, since official police reports are not necessarily filed, and testimony is not given in a courtroom, under oath.
More generally, you could claim defamation. This is not a crime though — it is a civil matter. If the defamer has no assets, it would be an expensive way to make a point ("I didn't do it!") and could lead to the Streisand Effect.
> You have an implicit claim
> that sexual assault is
> somehow magical, and
> deserving of different
> standards than insurance
> fraud
Specifically I believe sexual assaults are under-reported, and that more assaults happen because they're under-reported.
Taking those back-to-front, an insurance claim that's unreported doesn't endanger wider society, where a serial rapist abusing his position of power does.
As to under-reporting of sexual crimes, evidence is easily Googleable. But even if it wasn't, one looks at cases like Jimmy Saville where alleged victims didn't come out until others did; largely due to their feeling they wouldn't be believed.
Because it didn't happen. But you're free to feel superior to me based on lies about what I said.
> Specifically I believe sexual assaults are under-reported,
Yes... look at the numbers from Statistics Canada for one. In interviews, people claim sexual assault rates that are about 10x the rate of police reports.
Why are those crimes not reported? Statistics Canada asked... the #1 answer is "because the assault was too minor to bother with".
i.e. grabbing an ass in a bar is legally sexual assault. But few people are going to file a police report about it.
> and that more assaults happen because they're under-reported.
No such evidence exists.
There is evidence that there are massive programs to encourage people to report sexual assault. All such programs have not increased the reporting rate to police.
Which makes it look like the rate of police reports of serious crimes is pretty close to the real rate of serious crimes.
You seem to have taken it as a prescriptive one: "We should do the exact opposite of this policy, as hard as we can."
That claim is provably false. I explained why, using examples.
> You seem to have taken it as a prescriptive one: "We should do the exact opposite of this policy, as hard as we can."
That cannot possibly be concluded from what I said.
My claim is that when it's proven that people lie (i.e. fraudster, as I said), ignoring those lies is corrupting the justice system.
The thing is, perjury is a criminal offence. I don't think you'd disagree.
The mistake you're making is assuming that because I say some people are proven to lie, you think I'm claiming that all people lie. That's a logical fallacy, and basically assumes I'm an asshole or an idiot.
Your claim seems to be that we should never prosecute liars, because it will dissuade real victims from coming forward. I think that claim is horrific, for reasons I explained.
To counter your next comment.. no, I don't think claimants should be charged when their claims cannot be proven to be true. Again, making an unsubstantiated claim is not legally perjury, and is not a criminal offence.
My claim is that provably false claims should be punished.
Is that really so difficult to understand?
> That claim is provably false. I explained why, using examples.
No you didn't. You gave some examples where the proposed policy would not have the side effect. You didn't show that it would never have the side effect.
> That cannot possibly be concluded from what I said.
"The exact opposite of this policy", in context, would be letting people off for false accusations. Why were you talking about "the idea that those people should be let off" if you agree that peteretep never suggested letting people off?
I used the example of insurance fraud. Please pay attention.
Do we prosecute insurance fraud? Yes. Do such prosecutions dissuade victims from making real claims? No.
Or maybe you think that sexual assault is somehow magic. That prosecuting proven fraudsters in that case will somehow dissuade real victims from making claims. If so, you have to prove your position.
I've already proven that no such correlation exists in other situations.
> Why were you talking about "the idea that those people should be let off" if you agree that peteretep never suggested letting people off?
He did implicitly. If he's against charging fraudsters (for whatever reason), he's for letting them off.
> Or maybe you think
I'm deliberately avoiding taking an object-level position.
> If he's against charging fraudsters
You're still turning a descriptive statement into a prescriptive one. peteretep did not advocate any policy in the comment you replied to. Among the policies he did not advocate is "we should never charge any fraudster". Another policy he did not advocate is "we should be extremely careful which fraudsters we prosecute, to avoid of chilling effects".
He did not advocate a policy, but you took his comment as advocating an extreme policy.
That's pedantically true, and more honestly false.
Are you honestly going to claim that his description of "putting off victims" advocates for no position? That's ridiculous. He explicitly said ... which is generally thought to be not a good thing.
Are you next going to claim that he thinks putting off victims is not a good thing... but he isn't really advocating against punishing fraudsters even if it "puts off" victims?
And this is all ignoring the point that his claim was false.
Honestly, I find this nit-picking to be utterly ludicrous, to the point of irrational.
No specific policy, certainly. There are many policies consistent with what he said. I gave one already; another would be we should punish false accusations of sexual assault, but not as severely as sexual assault itself.
But you leapt to the most indefensible one. And you didn't even seem to notice that you were making this leap. I don't think it's nitpicking of me to point this out.
Nonsense.
His position was that any punishment of false claims was "putting off" victims from making real claims.
Which is what I reacted to.
Given the upvotes for my position and the downvotes for yours, I suspect the majority of people came to the same conclusion I did.
Please stop grasping at straws. Your insistence on taking me at an extreme position while accusing me of the same is unsupported by facts.
Not true. He was replying to a post that said "False accusations should be punished with the same penalty as the accuser tried to put upon the innocent." He said "This has the side-effect..." The referent of "this" is clearly not "any punishment of false claims".
And even if true, that is still not a policy proposal. I've given two alternative interpretations of the original comment. Here's a third: I have no particular policy proposal myself, but I wonder whether you've thought through the implications of yours?
> downvotes
Not that it matters, but right now my comments are all upvoted/neutral.
> Your insistence on taking me at an extreme position
I don't think we disagree on what your position is? We just disagree about whether or not you're correct.
That is, I'm accusing you of accusing peteretep of making a specific policy proposal. You insist that your accusation is correct. So I don't think I'm taking you at a position that you'd call extreme; I think I'm taking you at a position that you actually openly hold. If you disagree then we're wildly talking past each other.
Yes, we do. Go back and read the history. I started off with a particular position, that you then misconstrued, and mis-characterized.
> I think I'm taking you at a position that you actually openly hold
No, you're not. You've managed to twist what I say, and my defense of my position, to an extreme position.
My position is that people should be punished for breaking the law. And, that saying such punishment (whatever the form) somehow "puts off" innocent people from making claims is wrong.
So long as enforcement does not perfectly avoid false positives even in beginning prosecution (even if no false convictions occur) it increases the expected cost of a true report, and is a rational disincentive.
It may be that the particular punishment regime minimizes this cost and/or has benefits that offset the cost, but it's implausible that any real punishment scheme could avoid it altogether.
And I think you've been pretty explicitly talking about what he originally said. E.g. "His position was that..."
But now you seem to be denying that you said anything about what he originally said, or you seem to think that what you said about what he said isn't relevant, or... I don't know. Your comment does not make sense to me. All I can think is that you seem to be mixing meta-levels.
Anyway, I'm not exactly proud of how easily I get sucked into crap like this, so I'm going to try to tap out after this comment.
Why do people not see men as victims? His reputation could be ruined for the rest of his life, even if he is innocent. People take the law into their own hands and could physically hurt him as a result of a false accusation amid a system that disregards due process.
This community -- Hacker News -- is considering creating a list to name people accused of harassment without due process -- in other words, a vigilante system that could lead to innocent people, generally men, being victimized like this man, a real victim.
> Why do people not see
> men as victims?
> This has the side-effect that real victims are put off from filing charges, which is generally thought to be not a good thing.
Well, this man appears to be a victim who is filing charges. You seem not to consider him a real victim. Don't we want victims such as him to defend themselves? As I understand your quote, you can answer your question better than I can: why didn't you consider him a victim?
You may have other reasons not to consider him a victim than that he is male, but I'm just using your quote to illustrate. A quick search returned this page at the top -- http://www.clarkprosecutor.org/html/domviol/men.htm. I don't know its credibility, only that it suggests a trend, cites many sources, took less than 1 minute to find, and there seemed plenty more such pages.
> You seem not to consider
> him a real victim
... so he needs protection in case his lawsuit fails for lack of evidence and the defamer maliciously counter-sues him for defamation.
That's exactly parent's point. "Real" victims refers to victims of crime that actually happened and wasn't just made up, not some classification of crimes as serious or not.
Basically, the OP forgot to mention that harsh punishment should be reserved for cases where it can be solidly proven that allegations were made up and people started to nitpick on it.
If you locked a person in a cage for 10 years, you would be considered a horrible person. It's no different if you get other people to do it for you. A truly false accusation is a terrible crime that must be punished like any other. But it must be proven false beyond reasonable doubt just like any other crime.
The reason we don't punish people for retracting wrongful allegations is because we want people to retract wrongful allegations.
If you're in jail on a false rape claim, you'd rather the accuser went free and you were released; than that you stayed in jail because the accuser didn't want to take your place.
Another interesting concept during the inquisition was that the accused, before he knew who accused him, had the opportunity to list all his mortal enemies, and if the accuser was among them he was set free.
I'd actually tend to "yes", but it's probably impossible to answer. People react very different, and the prevalence of suicide is actually higher among rape victims than for people sentenced to long prison sentences.
But the real problem is: The penalty in your comparison would be for rape, whereas the accusation was just a failed attempt. Yes, that is usually harmful as well, but it's no longer comparable.
People are quick to throw around guilt, once that's in the room your reputation will be sullied forever as everybody still has this nagging "Well, he could still have done it" thought.
Case in point: The German teacher Horst Arnold. In 2001 a female coworker accused him of having raped her during a break at school. He denied the charges and in 2002 he was sentenced to 5 years in jail.
He served his time and, due to a series of random events, in 2008 it came to light that the female coworker, who got him into jail, has a rather long history of lying and misrepresenting facts.
In 2011 he was declared innocent, but he was denied rehabilitation into his job as a teacher and any monetary compensation for the time spent in jail. He fought for this until 2012, when he was found dead on the street due to cardiac arrest.
I don't think it's cultural. Most men have an innate desire to protect women, and treat them with special favor. This was the historical way women were protected before they had voting rights. Now, they have both political power, and men still tend to give them the special favor they had before. So it leads to an imbalance in society
I would guess this is confounded by the difficulty of committing suicide in prison? (Attempts might be less confounded, but still somewhat.)
The fact is that the justice system is not perfect. Occasionally a guilty person will be acquitted, and it would really be best not to also punish an innocent as a result of that.
"admits" can be a loaded word. The accuser claims. Hopefully, their accusation was not the only evidence in the first place.
but in some cases when evidence was manufactured the defence can come up with something that implicates the accuser.
That's not how criminal justice works. That's not even how torts work.
That's not how it works, is it? it is not a battle where someone has to be guilty - either the accused or the accuser. Someone can be acquitted without anyone lying, or making false statements, or anything else. Just a few examples: insufficient evidence to prosecute, contradictory timelines.
It is bizarre that anyone thinks that this could be the system - get a conviction or suffer a conviction yourself.
There is a spectrum between provable accusations and demonstrably false claims that includes uncertainty, doubt and poor evidence. It isn't like going all-in in poker!
However, I still think that the kind of 'eye for an eye' approach proposed by the comment I was relying to would have a non-trivial, negative impact on the reporting of crimes. Just as guilty people can be acquitted, innocent people can be found guilty (even if it's not automatic), and this means that the accuser is exposing themselves to risk.
Fundamentally, no one should ever have to worry about the consequences of reporting a crime.
The rub is, they should have to worry about the consequences, if they're making a bad-faith false report. They should have to worry a lot, because they themselves are committing a wrong by reporting a false crime in such a way.
It's an incredibly hard problem, though.
I think you mean crime, not wrong.
Personally I prefer the old system of innocent until proven guilty. You loose the mob justice, and you can't demand a lower standard of evidence, but in return people can report crimes without fear of repercussions. It is a fair trade, with the only drawback that a guilty person will have their punishment delayed until the justice system concludes with a guilty verdict.
I hear it has effectively no privacy.
See for example https://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=2054&ar...
And then you have just singled yourself out as someone with something to hide and in small towns that is usually a problem.