89% of 2024 sexual offences in England went unsolve

There's a potentially misleading graphic mid article: The proportion of violent and sexual offences solved has almost halved since 2017 that shows a change in "percentage of cases with an outcome" from 20% to a bit over 10%.

It's probable (but not clarified) that a good part of that percentage change is due to an increase in reporting of sexual offences.

It should go without saying that this is a sorry state of affairs, it should also be emphasized that this isn't neccessarily evidence of a sudden and sharp decline in the already low rate of convictions.

Has the case load dramatically increased, as in were there many more offenses? Were resources cut or reallocated? Did the definition of what counts as a sexual offense or reporting calculations change somehow? The article just doesn't say, which is absurdly bad journalism.

The alternative is to spend even more money on police funding, who aren't really that effective at stopping crime and who directly cause their own negative social issues. Prisons are extremely expensive to run per inmate.

The crime problem is much easier to deal with if the crimes do not happen in the first place.

So, not just sexual offenses and not just England.

And since the amount of resources dedicated to solving each case is proportional to its gravity, the fact that almost 90% of these crimes are unsolved probably means that most of them are minor and/ or lacking principal suspects, witnesses or evidence.

Probably a huge chunk of crimes of this nature don't even get reported because of that.

The reason I think its insights are relevant despite some major differences of context compared to this article is that the general barriers she faced at every step of the way trying to get some justice (despite being a Judge's Associate and the daughter of a well known and respected police officer) speak to the broad realities of navigating justice systems when you've been assaulted.

A total lack of understanding of these processes leads to people saying things like 'well there probably wasn't enough evidence' or 'the cops probably needed their finite resources for something bigger/worse' like they're unimpeachable axioms that exist in a vacuum.

The lack of critical thinking (or curiosity, or empathy?) about the (many, broad) realities of reporting crimes, or dealing with cops and the justice system if you're one of the few that make it far enough in the systems is just so frustrating to me. The thought terminating cliches that rely on the assumption that there's a just and relatively simple explanation for these stats get my goat.

In Eggshell Skull, Lee describes how many times she had to actually contact police in order to get them to even start a file, let alone getting them to actually take a report.

From first (and second) hand experience, the cops just turning people away (and lying about 'someone will be in touch') also applies to victims showing up at a police station immediately after an assault, clothes torn, not yet covered in the soon to bloom bruises. They don't even direct people to attend crisis centres or the hospital who will actually collect evidence following an assault. A friend of mine has described how the police (in a major metropolitan city) literally laughed and said 'men can't be sexually assaulted' when he brought in a male friend immediately after it had happened. They were then threatened with arrest by the cop when they asked to see someone at the station other than this front desk cop because they wanted to make a report. Arresting them would not be justifiable, but the intent of the threat, however empty, is pretty clear. Also good effing luck getting justice if the arrest threat was actually followed through. The cops are an active barrier to timely collection of evidence and a report. What is someone who keeps pushing for opening a case then left with? Little or no physical evidence and a report made maybe weeks after the event. It doesn't exactly set up a case all that well. Oh, I guess the cops aren't going to resource this case when that's all they've got to go on. The amount and quality of evidence and witnesses and whatnot doesn't seem to make a difference for these things but I've got no experience with that.

I guess I just wish people understood a little bit more about how things can work IRL and that it's not clear and simple. I know random internet anecdotes are worthless (especially the second hand ones) but maybe consider that things don't necessarily work the ways you think they do.

I'm also skirting around one of the more pertinent questions when crime stats like this pop up. What is the actual function of police? It's evident that it's not to solve crimes. That's maybe a discussion for another time.