A Good Lie Is Hard to Kill
Wendy McElroy over at Reason.com
posted a piece on domestic violence statistics. A statistic that has
been parroted by the Department of Justice, and even cited by
Attorney General Eric Holder in a 2009 speech claimed that “the
leading cause of death in the United States among African American
women aged 15 to 45 years” was homicide.
The American Journal of Public Health(vol. 93, No. 7, page 1089) called the homicides in this stat
“femicide, the homicide of women.” The National Institute ofJustice (NIJ) Journal (2003, page 18) called the deaths “intimate
partner violence.”
Now Jacquelyn C. Campbell is accused
of making up vital statements about domestic violence and then
presenting them as “findings” of a government survey. From
McElroy's piece at Reason.com:
“On January 14, [2014] the victim-advocacy organization Stop Abusive and Violent Environments (SAVE) filed a formal complaint with the Office of Research Integrity of the Department of Health and Human Services. SAVE wants the unit to “investigate these allegations of research misconduct by Dr. Campbell and colleagues, and take appropriate corrective action.” (As of January 31, the complaint has been rejected and the rejection is being appealed.)”
Later in the article McElroy reviewed
CDC data from 2003 showing that cancer, heart disease, unintentional
injury, and HIV/AIDS were all larger reasons for death in African
American women of that age group. This data was available years
before Eric Holder cited the
false statistic in a 2009 speech. The DOJ was confronted with this
information after the Washington Post ran
an expose on this fact-checking mission. However, “The outrageous
inaccuracy remains in the text of material on DOJ site, as it has for
over four years.”
Just
because a statistic has been proven as a fabrication, doesn't make it
disappear from the public sphere. See where this is going?
What Does This Have to do with Sex Offenders and this Blog?
Everything.
One look at the Nebraska Legislature's laws on registering sex
offenders gives us up-to-date proof that debunked data (read: lies)
doesn't just go away.
“The
Legislature finds that sex offenders present a high risk to commit
repeat offenses.” -Nebraska Revised Statute 29-4002.
Research
commissioned by the
legislature's Judiciary Committee itself
was published nationwide in 2013 showed that Nebraska's former sexual
offenders re-offend at less than a 1% rate every year. They know
this, but the statement above is still codified into state law.
Just last night on KETV news at 10, a
story was done on the fugitive task force in Omaha that is tasked
with apprehending sex offenders listed as “absconded” on the sex
offender registry website. Eddie posted a full critique on this fluff
piece here.
Up to last year, government websites
repeated the statistic that sex offenders have a re-offense rate 50
times higher than what studies have found for at least the last
decade. Just because good information exists, doesn't mean people
want to report it. Or read it, for that matter.