I did a search on BBC news to see if I could find it, however the only references seemed to be ones from last year singing the praises of how the rate of conviction in domestic abuse cases was going up…

As to the low conviction rate – yes it is very low, but from my limited exposure to criminology there could be dozens of reasons for this. Domestic violence cases are always going to be subject to fickle victims, a lack of witnesses and emotional attachments. I think 1 in 5 convictions would be a very good rate, so 17% seems reasonable. I am always concerned when the media / police talk about having to increase the rate of convictions – this is easiest done by convicting innocent people…

I hang my head in shame. I will leave the text as is though to show my mistake.

But I think you’ve accidentally done the same thing yourself. You say
“the Shankill Butchers killed 150% more Protestants than Catholics”
but the numb3rs actually show – the second number of victims (12) is about ‘50% more’ or ‘150% of’ the first number (7) 🙂

Signed
A Pedant

Re: the Shankill coverage, that sort of skewed emphasis does nothing to reconcile groups who already distrust each other. Nice public service, that. 🙁