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Comment by sunwooz | Hacker News Reader

There's tons of rape going on in the good ol' US of A. Why not fix it here? then we can go ahead and be a shining example for other countries to follow.

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How is this relevant at all? Not that the article is great but how is rape in country X relevant to a horrific incident in country Y? Or is this supposed to make the shit that happens in a savage third world country better just cause it happens here?

Good point, however I do understand how it happens. People have a perception of how safe/unsafe their own country is, so adding in the US numbers allows a mental comparison to occur. The recent spate of gun violence related articles had this as well, with people comparing and contrasting Australia, the UK, Switzerland and a host of other countries. I wondered why these places mattered - I concluded that it provided context.

Are there really "tons of rape" in the United States? Are they really as bad or as systemic as the gang rapes occuring in India?

Yes:

> According to United States Department of Justice document Criminal Victimization in the United States, ... 1 of 6 U.S. women and 1 of 33 U.S. men have experienced an attempted or completed rape.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_statistics#United_States

While not contesting the assertion, one should be careful to note what denotes 'rape' in different countries, and the divergence from de jure and de facto. It's not interpreted or recorded the same way in all places. Even in the US what constitutes rape today may not coincide 100% with that it constituted 50 years ago.

For a starker contrast compare say Romania with Sweden. Which one might one theoretically feel safer in, in which one might one feel psychologically safer, in which one would one be physically safer?

Sweden has a much higher (3-4x general crime rate) and an even higher violent crime rate (about 12-14x) than Romania. (http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/index....). I don't see anything surprising here.

There are definitely more rape in the USA than in many other developed countries.

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_statistics

In 2010, police reported a rate of 27.3 per 100,000 people in USA. According to that document, in India it is 1.8 for 100,000 people. However, very few people report rape in India. It could be 5% or even less than that. Taking this into account the true numbers in India could be higher than in the US. While higher, it may not be order of magnitude worse or systemic than other countries.

The much bigger problem is the slow justice system and very low conviction rates.

Have a look at prison rape stats for the US if you feel the need for some shocking data.

This isn't a problem with just India and the US. A lot of the world's countries don't even have laws against rape.

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