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PeakMetrics / Fact Checks

Crime & justice fact checks

Explore claims publishers have checked about crime & justice. Read their original ratings and follow the evidence.

6,854 published reviews in this topic

Pagella PoliticaCrime & justice

Già oggi i detenuti in carcere per droga sono il 34 per cento e non sono grandi narcotrafficanti: nella maggior parte dei casi sono piccoli spacciatori o addirittura consumatori. Inoltre il 25 per cento dei detenuti è tossicodipendente

Publisher’s rating: Vero

Pagella Politica examined statements by Radicali Italiani representative Antonella Soldo about people imprisoned for drug-related offences in Italy, including the claims that they made up about a third of prisoners, that most were not major traffickers, and that one quarter of prisoners were drug-dependent. To check the figures, the review used Ministry of Justice prison statistics for 31 December 2018 and said it contacted the ministry’s press office for additional information on drug dependence. It reported 59,655 prisoners in total, including 21,080 held for drug-related offences: 35.3 per cent of the prison population. The ministry data gave 16,036 drug-dependent prisoners, or 27.9 per cent. The review also assessed the claim about the scale of drug offending, using figures from the 2018 White Book on Drugs, which it said were supplied by the Department of Prison Administration and concerned prisoners present on 31 December 2017. Of 19,793 people imprisoned for drug offences, 13,836—70 per cent—were held for the offence covered by article 73 alone; 4,981 were held in combination with the more serious article 74, and 976 exclusively under article 74. The review therefore found the broad claim that most were not in the more serious category supported by the figures. It qualified the characterization of prisoners as small dealers or consumers: the review said it was difficult to verify the distinction between consumers and dealers in practice. It explained that article 73 concerns conduct judged not to be exclusively for personal use, with the assessment depending on judicial discretion. Its verdict was based on the closeness of the reported proportions to the figures, the majority held under article 73 alone, and that qualification about what the data could establish.

NewtralCrime & justice

La Policía de Waterloo estudia multar a Ciudadanos con 7000 euros

Publisher’s rating: Falso

The claim concerns a supposed €7,000 fine imposed on Ciudadanos by Waterloo authorities after Inés Arrimadas and other Catalan party members held an event outside Carles Puigdemont’s home on February 24, 2019. Newtral says it checked the claim with Waterloo’s municipal authorities. The municipality denied that Ciudadanos had been fined €7,000 for organizing a demonstration, and the police rules did not provide for a penalty of that amount. The investigation distinguishes the lack of authorization for the event from an already-imposed fine. Waterloo’s police said no authorization had been granted. The municipality reported seven case files: five involving improperly parked vehicles, one concerning an unauthorized public-road demonstration that obstructed traffic or inconvenienced pedestrians, and one concerning noise from a generator. Those files could lead to penalties; the source does not report that the €7,000 fine had been issued. The municipality said the cases would be passed to the relevant official, who would decide whether to pursue them under the police regulations. The stated maximum fine was €350, and the municipality declined to disclose any eventual amounts, citing confidentiality and privacy. Ciudadanos also told Newtral that it had not received a notification from Belgian authorities at that point. Thus, the reporting supports that the event was unauthorized and generated potential proceedings, but not the specific claim that Ciudadanos had been fined €7,000.

Pagella PoliticaCrime & justice

Dal 1992 ad oggi sono oltre 26 mila, quasi mille all’anno, gli individui che hanno subito un’illegittima restrizione della propria libertà personale, prima di essere definitivamente assolti con sentenza passata in giudicato

Publisher’s rating: Vero

The claim concerns figures cited by Senate President Maria Elisabetta Alberti Casellati at a 16 February conference in Padua: about 26,000 people since 1992 and roughly a thousand a year who experienced unjust detention or judicial error. The review distinguishes this count of people later recognized as innocent by the justice system from the broader, unquantifiable question of people who may have been wrongly convicted but never cleared through a later legal process. For the historical total, the review reports that figures from the Ministry of Economy, processed by Errorigiudiziari.com, counted 26,412 people who had suffered unjust pretrial detention from 1992 to early 2018. Including 138 judicial-error cases brought the total to 26,550. The review says this works out to just over a thousand cases per year, broadly matching Casellati’s account. The figures therefore support the claim’s scale, though the reported endpoint is early 2018, not the present day. For a more recent annual comparison, the review cites Errorigiudiziari.com’s figures based on official ministerial information: 856 unjust-detention cases and nine judicial-error cases from January through September 2018. It notes that these data cover only nine months. Official statistics were not readily available to the reviewers: they say the ministries had not published the statistics required by law and had not responded to their inquiries by 28 February 2019. The review’s conclusion rests on the available processed data, not a complete official series through the date of the claim.

台灣事實查核中心Crime & justice

烤肉式用刑 中國凌虐新疆人手法曝光

Publisher’s rating: 錯誤

The report investigated whether the video cited in coverage titled “烤肉式用刑 中國凌虐新疆人手法曝光” showed Chinese police torturing people from Xinjiang. That coverage described a person in a blue prison uniform tied to a device while people acting as police appeared to operate it. The report’s central question was whether the footage documented actual police abuse. (S1: “爭議點：報導中影片內容是否為「中國警方虐待新疆人士」的影片？”; “從中能見新疆人士穿著藍色囚衣被五花大綁在刑具上”)

NewtralCrime & justice

El texto que muestra los datos del CGPJ sobre denuncias falsas

Publisher’s rating: Falso

Newtral examined a viral text that used figures from a report by Spain’s General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) to challenge the official figure that 0.01% of complaints of gender-based violence from 2009 to 2017 were false. The review says the viral text presented the report’s findings incorrectly. It describes checking the text against the CGPJ report and says it also compared a saved screenshot with the version then circulating, because a disputed claim had been removed from that text. One numerical error concerned the report’s sample of court decisions. The viral text described 200 decisions and 47 acquittals. Newtral says the CGPJ study analyzed 497 decisions: 311 convictions, 119 acquittals, and 63 decisions containing both a conviction and an acquittal. The review also says the viral text selectively used decisions issued in “single instance,” while describing them as first-instance cases. The review rejects the inference that an acquittal establishes a false complaint. It says the CGPJ report did not support the viral text’s claim that nearly 80% of acquittals showed indications of falsity. Instead, the review lists reasons for acquittals including insufficient corroboration or evidence, a victim’s decision not to testify, and alleged improper motives; it says these reasons do not themselves establish fabrication. It also explains that an acquittal for lack of proof does not establish that the reported events did not occur: in criminal proceedings, the prosecution must prove the case, and doubt can require acquittal. The review’s central point is that the viral text misrepresented the report’s figures and treated acquittals as evidence of false reporting without a basis in the report.