TOW #28 "Rape -- A Lack of Conviction"

            David McCandless, a British author and information designer, hosts a website titled informationisbeautiful.net.  On his site, he posts infographics designed to question commonly accepted beliefs within our society.  In one of his most recent infographics, titled “Rape—A Lack of Conviction,” McCandless examines our society’s reaction to allegations of rape.  Mostly, he finds that very few rape cases are actually reported because of the stigma that surrounds the topic.

            McCandless uses brightly colored circles to represent various statistics about rape in the UK.  The circles are arranged in terms of the various stages of identifying a rape and prosecuting an attacker.  The size of the circles continues to get smaller and smaller as you move down the infographic that represents the fact that only a small percentage of rape cases actually ends in a conviction.  By using this simple yet impactful design, McCandless allows the viewer to easily identify the logical structure and progression of his reasoning.  Next, at each stage of the infographic where there is a different circle to represent a specific statistic, McCandless compares the size of that circle to the percentages of other crimes that reach that stage of prosecution.  For example, he writes that 82% of reported rapes do not come to trial while only 27% of drug-related charges do not.  In this way, he emphasizes the fact that rape may not be considered as serious an offense as it should be.  Ultimately, McCandless hopes to reveal the fact that we need to be more proactive about prosecuting rapists because they do severe damage to our society.