Must try harder

I sometimes think I must have gone to sleep and woken up in an Alice in Wonderland world. We hear stories, which we hope are not true but suspect are, of parking meter attendants and traffic police being given targets as to how many tickets they must issue, but this morning on the box a Government Minister, no less, was bemoaning the fact that only 6% of rape trials result in a conviction, and stating that This Is Not Good Enough, and that Something Must Be Done About It! I mean - it couldn't just be that the answer is that only 6% of the accused were guilty, could it? We do still work on the premise of the presumption of innocence, don't we? The argument seems to be that because this is a much lower conviction rate than for other offences, it must mean that men who should be being found guilty are getting away with it. But this ignores the fact that rape is very much a crime sui generis and any attempt to draw comparisons, statistical or otherwise, with other crimes is like comparing apples and pears.