The difference between rape and terrorism:

Via The Iconoclast makes an interesting comment:

Figures released last week by the Home Office showed that, since 2001, only around one in eight of those arrested by the police in the course of investigations into terrorist plots are convicted of terrorist offences by the courts. Those figures were seen by many people as evidence that the police have arrested people who had nothing to do with terrorism.

"The overwhelming majority of those arrested for terrorism were not guilty of any charge," noted Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty, articulating the concerns about the misuse of state power. Chris Huhne, the Lib Dems' home affairs spokesman, endorsed that point: the figures showed that many of those "tarnished with the brush of terrorism aren't terrorists".

Later in the week, another set of figures came out relating accusations and convictions. This time, the crime wasn't terrorism. It was rape. Although the rate of convictions to accusations is even lower in rape cases than it is with terrorism – only about one in every 14 accusations of rape made to the police leads to a conviction – the reaction was very different.

No one suggested that the low rate of conviction in rape cases implied that most of "those tarnished with the brush of being rapists aren't rapists". On the contrary, the problem was taken to be that the police and the courts let the guilty men go free.