Would prosecuting false rape accusers according to a harsher set of rules not lead to said accusers to maintain the lie as opposed to 'fessing up, thus leading to more victims of false accusations rem

2013-05-16T00:18:07+00:00

Yes. But it would also sharply reduce the number of allegations, which would more then compensate.

Piroko · 2013-05-16T01:17:26+00:00

Most false accusers only fess up when the evidence that it's a lie becomes insurmountable.

CrossHook · 2013-05-16T13:17:40+00:00

That's like asking if we stop punishing people for rape would rapists be less likely to kill the victim in an attempt to escape punishment?

Maybe, but we should still be punishing people for breaking the fucking law.

IHaveALargePenis · 2013-05-16T01:59:17+00:00

The main problem is that when it comes to rape accusations, it's guilty until proven innocent. If we get that fixed, then it shouldn't matter if they keep the lie going. But they might think twice before doing if there were serious repercussions for lying about something like rape.

Bla34112 · 2013-05-16T20:36:58+00:00

Aye.. that's why I don't think it's productive to prosecute people who actually do fess up early. (But keep that on the record in case she ever does it again)

But we can prosecute people who make false accusations and stick by it until it becomes clear that she's lieng.

Than we can offer her a deal:

"Either you confess and do probation, or you'll stick by it and you could possibly get 10 years."

Something like that.

Mitschu · 2013-05-16T09:43:05+00:00

Ooh, and while we're at it, let's reduce the punishment for murder, that way more serial killers and mass murderers come forth from the woodwork and turn themselves in, giving their victims' families peace of mind! Certainly reducing the punishment won't encourage more people to commit the crime!

You're arguing that deterrents unnecessarily create incentive to maintain a lie, while seemingly ignoring the fact that deterrents largely prevent the crimes that criminals find themselves lying about.

I know there've been days where I've just wanted to track down and beat the shit out of people over the internet, but every time, I think to myself, "Wait, Mitschu, that's illegal, criminal stalking and criminal assault, and you'll spend a long time in jail for it."

Would you prefer instead that I pummel people, then go to the police and scuff my feet, tell them gosh I'm sorry, and rest assured knowing that my temper won't be punished if I act upon it, but inform the authorities afterwards?

Hypothetically speaking, would your family be fine if I hospitalized you, then went to the police to inform them that guy in the coma... yeah, that was me. Now you know. Peace of mind, right? So, I'll just sign this sworn testimony and be off! Won't happen again, I promise this time!

No? That's ridiculous?

Well, how about if a person falsely accuses someone else, and then somebody comes along suggesting that the proper course is to not grant victims the full protection under the law they're civilly entitled to, because that'll just prevent their perpetrator from coming clean about how willfully they attempted to destroy another person's life?

Isn't that also ridiculous?

Hey, one more ridiculous thing for the road. We should also ignore due process, and publicly name and shame people merely accused of crimes, before any evidence has been presented. Oh, and grant the accuser full anonymity, legally mandated! Wouldn't that be ridi...

Oh. Nevermind.

DavidByron · 2013-05-16T14:25:24+00:00

The emphasis should be on discounting the word of just one woman as evidence for a rape trial to begin with. what needs to be fixed is how easily innocent men get jailed to begin with.

rightsbot · 2013-05-15T23:14:17+00:00

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Lawtonfogle · 2013-05-16T01:49:41+00:00

So we are comparing cases where a false accusation has led to an innocent man being in prison, where damage has been irrevocably done, but where intervention can occur to reduce/eliminate the problem from getting worse, right?

This can be compared to an ongoing case of child molestation, where a child molester has already groomed and begun molesting a child, but the sooner they stop and the sooner the child gets into therapy, the better of the child will be (even though damage has already been done that does not go away).

Would you advocate lowering the penalties for current ongoing child molestation to encourage child molesters to come forth and report what they are doing so that the child can be rescued from the situation and put into therapy? Most people would answer somewhere between 'no' and 'are you fucking kidding me?'.

The logic behind both seem to be the same, though one tends to be a much more emotionally intrusive case. Also note the similarity is closer than it appears because what can happens to a man in prison for rape? They have a higher chance of being raped or sexually assaulted.

beema · 2013-05-16T05:21:08+00:00

As far as I can tell... there's not much incentive to "fess up" once a trial or police procedure is under way, so increasing the penalties for being found out would not have an effect on those in this situation. The incentives to maintain a lie already far outweigh the incentives to "fess up", and so we would not expect to see an increase in false accusations by an increase in false accusation penalties. Also, it seems to me that the best way to handle this problem would be to respect the precedents set in other arms of the law wherein people can make false claims -- what's the penalty for making up a murder claim?

tyciol · 2013-05-16T06:48:54+00:00

Yes, it would. That is why we should have a clause where those who beat the system, get a guy jailed, THEN confess, don't get punished at all, and get monetarily rewarded.

I talked about this a few months back at http://redd.it/13ojt0

Creating harsh punishments for false accusers isn't going to help that huge a deal so long as we still have a system that fails to regularly uncover them. We have a system that has every incentive not to, to simply keep jailing men based on specious evidence and then shut the book.

If we create monetary incentive for those who successfully dupe the system, we will force it to become more rigorous.

We should have steep penalties for false accusers uncovered against their will during the course of trial. But once a man is convicted, a woman should be able to come foreward, exonerate the falsely accused, and then both she and the man should be paid for their troubles.

The only way the court can avoid paying is by not convicting men based on bad evidence.

mikesteane · 2013-05-16T08:17:33+00:00

It has to be done on a sliding scale, the later the admission, the harsher the punishment. Making false accusers pay a serious price would reduce the number of false accusations made in the first place.

oneiorosgrip · 2013-05-16T14:23:12+00:00

The same is true of all criminals - who would willingly confess to a murder they could hide? A robbery? Credit fraud? Should we be more lenient toward these criminals in the interest of getting them to confess when we cannot prove our case against them? Would they confess if we were only going to punish them a little, as opposed not getting punished because we can't prove our case?

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