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Fact check: Which European country has the highest and lowest rape conviction rates, respectively?
Executive Summary
Sweden appears in several datasets and reports as having among the highest reported rape rates per capita and notable increases in convictions after legal reform, while England and Wales (and parts of the UK more broadly) consistently appear in reporting as having some of the lowest proportions of reported rape cases that progress to prosecution and conviction. Direct cross-country comparisons of “conviction rates” are unreliable because definitions of rape, reporting practices, and counting methods vary widely across Europe, so any claim naming single highest and lowest countries must be treated as incomplete and context-dependent [1] [2] [3] [4].
1. Why Sweden shows high reported rates but mixed conviction signals — and what that means for “highest” claims
Sweden’s data are cited repeatedly: it records relatively high rates of reported rape per 100,000 population in UNODC-style compilations and saw a 75% rise in convictions after a 2018 law change, although absolute conviction numbers remained modest (333 convictions in 2019). This produces the appearance of Sweden having a high conviction rate in some framings, but the underlying facts point to a more complex picture: higher reporting rates inflate numerator visibility, legal definition changes alter the denominator of what is counted as rape, and conviction-count increases after reform reflect legal and procedural shifts rather than a simple cross-country superiority in conviction performance [1] [2]. The data therefore support Sweden as a prominent case, but not definitive proof it has the single highest conviction rate among all European states [1] [2].
2. England and Wales: record reporting but very low progression to charge and conviction
Multiple recent accounts document that England and Wales have very high volumes of reported rape alongside extremely low prosecution and charging proportions — for example, a figure of roughly 2.8–3.0% of reported rapes progressing to a suspect being charged in several 2025 reports. That combination yields one of the lowest effective conviction-throughput rates recorded in contemporary press and justice-agency summaries, underpinning claims that England and Wales may rank at the bottom in Europe for proportion of reports leading to conviction [3] [5]. These findings remain context-dependent: high reporting rates again change denominators, and scrutiny reports describe systemic improvement efforts while acknowledging current attrition between report and charge [6] [5].
3. Scotland and other UK nations complicate the “single worst” narrative
Scotland’s own statistics show a low conviction proportion for rape relative to other crime types and specific figures such as a 48% conviction outcome for cases reaching certain procedural stages in 2021–22, while overall conviction rates for crimes differ. These Scottish figures illustrate that within a single sovereign state (the UK), different jurisdictions produce divergent outcomes, weakening any attempt to single out one European country as the absolute best or worst without fine-grained, jurisdictional comparators. The UK picture therefore suggests multiple internal lows and highs rather than a clear continent-wide minimum [7] [6].
4. Why direct country-to-country conviction rate comparisons are unreliable
Independent analyses explicitly warn that comparing European rape statistics “doesn’t work” without harmonized definitions: countries differ in what counts as rape, whether attempted offences are included, how police record reports, and how legal systems pursue prosecutions and convictions. UNODC-style rate tables and media summaries highlight disparities in reporting culture and legal scope; thus headline rankings (e.g., “highest” or “lowest” conviction rates) often reflect methodological differences as much as underlying justice performance. Any assertion that identifies a single highest and lowest European country must therefore be caveated by these measurement problems [4] [2].
5. Reconciling the fragmented evidence: measured conclusions and missing pieces
The assembled sources point to Sweden as a country with high reported rape incidence and notable post-reform conviction increases, and to England and Wales (and parts of the UK) as jurisdictions where very few reported rapes result in charges and convictions, with Scotland showing further internal variation. However, no single, methodologically harmonized dataset across all European countries is provided in these sources to definitively name the absolute highest and lowest conviction rates; the most responsible conclusion is that Sweden and England/Wales represent, respectively, prominent examples at opposite ends of commonly cited metrics, but the ranking depends on which metric and definition are chosen [1] [3] [7] [2].