JUDGING CRIMES

A month ago Slate surprised me by coming out in favor of the 19th century.  This from a magazine that tells you how its reporters voted in the presidential election, and I don't think anyone would confuse them for the staff of the American Spectator.  And yet it publishes a piece advocating a return to the Victorian legal doctrine that a rape conviction cannot be based on the woman's word alone.  (See post 280.)  

The article argued that prosecutors, that tribe of troglodytes, prosecute way too many rape cases: "Mike Nifong did what prosecutors almost always do when a complainant comes to them alleging a sexual assault: He took his complainant at her word and went full speed ahead with a prosecution." 

Curious to know whether there's any truth to that? 

Last year the Alaska Justice Forum published a study of sexual assault case processing in Anchorage.  Since Alaska is by far the national leader in rapes, leaving my New Mexico to run a distance second, the study perhaps included rather more cases than you might imagine.  (Alaska's lead is so pronounced as to suggest they're including offenses that other states discreetly disregard.) 

The Alaska report looked at the 1,235 sexual assaults reported to the Anchorage Police Department during the first four years of the century.  "Data were collected on 1,052 (98%) of these reports. Of these 1,052, 188 (17.9%) were referred for prosecution and had reached final disposition prior to data collection."   That sounds like it's describing two categories - those referred and those finalized - but elsewhere the report makes clear that the 17.9% includes 100% of the referred cases.  The other 82.1% of reported sexual assaults weren't even referred the district attorney.

Of the small minority of cases that made the move from detective's desk to DA's cave, only 127, or just over two-thirds, were accepted for prosecution.   And the great majority of those (87.4%) resulted in conviction.

So in the state with the highest rate of forcible rape in the country, prosecutors "went full speed ahead" on 12.1% of reported sexual assaults.   But then, that's just Alaska.  What's it like elsewhere?

Ten years ago, psychologists Patricia A. Frazier and Beth Haney published an article entitled: "Sexual assault cases in the legal system: Police, prosecutor, and victim perspectives."  Their article begins by examining prior research, much of it dating from the 1970s, which showed that about 60% of sexual assaults were reported to authorities, of which about 40% led to an arrest, of which about 50% were charged with felonies, of which about 67% resulted in convictions. 

So if you have, say, 188,960 sexual assaults in a year, about 113,376 are reported to police.  A suspect is arrested about 45,350 times.  And about 22,675 people are actually charged with a crime.  So 11.9% of the total number of cases result in prosecution. 

Frazier and Haney themselves conducted an in-depth study of sexual assault cases in an unnamed Midwestern metropolis.  (The fact that both researchers were, at the time of the study, affiliated with the University of Minnesota doesn't necessarily give us as clue as to the name of the city.)  During the period of their study, 569 sexual assaults were reported.  In 279 of those cases, a suspect was identified.  In 187, the suspect was questioned.   127 cases were referred to the prosecutor.

Two of the referrals were in juvenile cases, so those were dropped out of the study.  Of the remaining 125 cases, 95 were accepted for prosecution.  Several cases involved the same defendant, so that worked out to 91 separate prosecutions.  Ninety of those were for criminal sexual conduct and the other was for robbery and assault.

So in this unnamed Midwestern burg, perpetrators of sexual assault avoided prosecution in a mere 83.4% of cases reported to police.  Prosecutors went "full speed ahead" in a full 16.6% of the reported cases.   (I'll pause for a second to allow you to gasp.)   Those 91 cases produced 69 convictions; seven cases were unresolved at the time of study, or had been transferred to another jurisdiction; and 15 cases were dismissed, all but one of those by the prosecutors themselves, apparently.  (The authors go a bit overboard in avoiding legal jargon.)  There was apparently one directed verdict, but no jury acquittals.

Pretty scary, huh?  You can practically hear the jackboots on the icy pavement.  No wonder Slate is calling for a return to the good old days.  Next up: Jacob Weisberg launches a campaign to repeal the 19th amendment.

Incidentally, the idea that 60% of sexual assaults are reported to police?  Old news.  Try 38.3%  (table 91).