Background:
I read that about 4% of rape accusations result in convictions. A small number result in any jail, and most are ruled indeterminable after a short conversation with the police. The proof beyond a reasonable doubt standard lets many rapists hunt freely (although it also protects the innocent).
This thread is more about whether this would deter most rapists, not so much whether it is fair.
Proposed Solution
If someone is accused, and we know they were in the same apartment alone, and it is credible but can't be proven either way, they get 7-90 days in jail, with work release, and no publicly searchable record. Only the police have an internal record shared with other police departments. No one else knows about it, unless that person decides to tell people. The person's life is not ruined. There is no trial besides the police investigation and formula and some discretion.
The more men his accuser accused, the shorter his sentence. The more women accused him before, the longer. The more believable her story, the longer. The longer she waits to report it, the shorter the sentence. The whole network of info is available at any trial.
Reasoning
We don't want to ruin someone's life on one accusation. Even missing work could do that. The way you treat cancer is you cut out obvious big cancer, and then you use chemo or radiation therapy that hits the cancer much more than the body cells. This jail time would hit every rapist, but only a tiny number of innocent people. The innocent could survive it and would know they would not get hit again, whereas the rapists would get hit every time.
Not just any woman can put a guy in jail. It has to be one who he trusted enough to deliberately take or go home with, and her story must seem credible even though not provable after police give both a chance to explain themselves. It has to be a location and situation where she can credibly say she felt fear. They will still add other non-fear accusations to the record to see if a trail emerges, but those don't automatically result in jail.
The question then is whether the jail time would discourage many rapists. What is your guess?
Would it make feel victims feel at all vindicated? The goal is determent, not justice.
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