“Just believe them” is shorthand for “Believe them long enough to actually press charges and hold a trial instead of dismissing them by default”.
Between charges and a trial is a criminal investigation. If that doesn’t give enough reason to proceed to trial, charges are dropped.
A better stat would be %age of accusations that result in an investigation. That should be a lot higher, but police shouldn’t be trying to prosecute cases that have nothing but an accusation to court.
They aren’t processing evidence, so what else can they prosecute with? Vibes?
www.endthebacklog.org/what-is-the-backlog/
Look up statistics for your area.
More capacity to process rape kits is something I can get behind. More evidence is good. It would stop people clamouring for convictions based on accusations alone.
Alright I said in another comment, these aren’t convictions based on accusations. They are based on witness testimony, which has been cross examined. Plenty of opportunity for defence.
So if you are assaulted with no witnesses then having bruises, stab wounds, and other injuries shouldn’t be enough for the police to take any action?
Because that is the physical evidence that the police routinely dismiss.
That’s because they’re not looking for evidence that shows a crime was committed, they’re looking for evidence of who committed the crime
Your injuries are evidence of a crime, but not necessarily evidence of a specific perpetrator
Furbag@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Yeah, I think a lot of people are completely missing the point. Very similar to how saying “black lives matter” doesn’t imply that non-black lives do not matter, or that black lives must somehow be considered more important than any other life, the phrase “believe women” doesn’t imply that we should start doubting men, or that a woman’s testimony should be held as a higher form of evidence than anything else. It’s pointing out the clear systemic bias against women in a system controlled and dominated mostly by men who do not want to cede their power and authority.
One of the many flaws of the English language is how difficult it is to condense a very complex sociopolitical message down into a catchy one-liner without losing a ton of the context that got people there in the first place.
FauxLiving@lemmy.world 23 hours ago
I’m not sure how you square that definition with what the OP wrote in the headline.
They said that we wouldn’t need the Epstein files (the evidence collected by the FBI in order to prosecute this child sex trafficking ring) to prove DJT’s guilt if we just believed women.
I hope you can, at least, see how that appears to be saying that “the evidence isn’t needed if we believe women.” and not "we should take womensy claims seriously.
You’re right that there are two vastly different interpretations of that statement: (1). Take women seriously and (2). A woman’s accusation is a higher form of evidence.
OP’s headline is, at best, poorly written but it’s very easy to understand why it appears to be using (2).
Furbag@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
You make a great point. My own counter to that would be that not every consequence needs to come directly from the courts. People are more than capable of making up their minds about it with just the testimony from the accusers and then acting on that information accordingly, we just didn’t. That doesn’t seem to be OP’s principal argument, though.
spankmonkey@lemmy.world 1 day ago
That is a very accurate description!
Bubbey@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Wasn’t BLM just a scam to extract money for its operators?
Furbag@lemmy.world 1 day ago
No.