Jonathan_Graehl comments on Let them eat cake: Interpersonal Problems vs Tasks - Less Wrong

70 Post author: HughRistik 07 October 2009 04:35PM

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Comment author: Jonathan_Graehl 09 October 2009 01:50:24AM 1 point [-]

I wonder where I read 3% (it was very recent) - unfortunately all I can see now are order-of-magnitude higher estimates for what i presume is the broader category of "sexual assault".

You're right.

Comment author: Jonathan_Graehl 09 October 2009 01:58:15AM 0 points [-]

I found my "source" - it was a blog comment

the UN gives an annual incidence for rape per 100,000 people. If we assume rapes of men or of women outside ages 15-50 are (fairly) negligible, then the victim pool is only about a third of the total pop, if that – giving a rate of 0.03% * 3 = 0.09% for the victim pool. Since women are in the pool for 35 years, that gives a lifetime prevalence of about 3.15% (leaving out the correction for a few individuals being victimized more than once). 3% is high.

I've seen 4-10% elsewhere.

Comment author: DanArmak 09 October 2009 02:05:06AM *  2 points [-]

That comment uses the figure quoted by the previous comment. But look at the pdf linked there for the UN report - that's not a number of rapes, that's a number of "crimes recorded in criminal police statistics!" No wonder it's much lower than the real figure. (I don't even know if it includes all reports/accusations or just counts found guilty by a court.)

Incidentally that document is missing some of the more interesting statistics for the US, while it has them for other countries. "Rape average prison sentence served" is one.