Stories like this one out of Utah are far less infuriating for me, or at least infuriating in a different sense, than the one that I wrote about that kicked off this newsletter business. Perhaps just merely aggravating.
The story was about a police operation to check on the compliance of those with past sex offense convictions, and found — the the chyron above indicates — that 20% were non-compliant.
Assistant United States Attorney John Huber (pictured), gave the noted that operations such as these
[S]hows the importance of law enforcement amid outcry from community activists demanding police reform.
“This type of operation shows how ridiculous the demands are to defund the police, to defund law enforcement. Who will protect our children?” Huber said.
It’s a fair question: we do, after all, want the police to protect our families and solve crimes like murder and rape. Notably, the Salt Lake City Police Department who, according to ProPublica, cleared just 3% of rape cases opened in 2016.
Much easier than solving crime is knocking on the doors of people who have exited the criminal system and served their sentence to ensure that all of their paperwork is in order and — if not — charge them with crimes. Things like not registering a vehicle properly with the state, or failing to follow strict and complicated time requirements after a move, or not registering an e-mail address. If you’ve ever neglected to updated a driver’s license after a move, it’s like that — except a felony. In some jurisdictions, so-called “failure to register” or “failure to comply” offenses are the most common reason that people on the registry are sent back to prison.
Importantly, though, research has generally found that they’re not associated with an increase in sexual recidivism. In a conversation I had with people smarter than me, one of them made the point that if someone’s taxes are late, does that mean that they’re more likely to commit a crime?
These cases of non-compliance are what I’ve referred to in the past as administrative “crimes” that are so hyper-technical and ensure that people stay trapped in the system that are utterly untethered from any public safety purpose.
But, these cases are easy make-work that allow police departments to flex like they take sexual violence very seriously even if they may not take it very seriously at all, cf. SLPD’s rape clearance rates. So it’s good optics, but bad policing. We’re diverting resources away from preventing sexual harm and into a system of punishing people who have already been held accountable for some crime.
Also, and not for nothing, but second most-common complaint about police officers is sexual misconduct.
I think it’s important to take sexual harm seriously, and to focus on policy that makes accountability and prevention work. It’s just that we’re knocking on the wrong doors.
I have to question this "clearance rate" stat. You should know by now that hard numbers are thrown around with no real context.
RAINN nhas been throwing out this bogus stat that "only 5 of 1000 rapists are in prison." But where do they get it from?
They start with the National Crime Victimization Survey. One problem is that the estimates of unreported rapes in the NCVS come from small numbers of responses. In the 2010 NCVS, that number is <100:
“While the change in the rape or sexual assault rate from 2009 to 2010 is significantly different at the 90%-confidence level, care should be taken in interpreting this change because the estimates of rape/sexual assault are based on a small number of cases reported to the survey. Therefore, small absolute changes and fluctuations in the rates of victimization can result in large year-to-year percentage change estimates. For 2010, the estimate of rape or sexual assault is based on 57 unweighted cases compared to 36 unweighted cases in 2009. The measurement of rape or sexual assault represents one of the most serious challenges in the field of victimization research."
In 2010, there were 57 'unreported cases' out of sample size of nearly 71000 people: In 2010, 40974 households and 73283 individuals age 12 and older were interviewed for the NCVS.
The NCVS covers combines sexual assaults, rapes, AND ATTEMPTS. Sexual assault is defined as "A wide range of victimizations, separate from rape or attempted rape. These crimes include attacks or attempted attacks generally involving unwanted sexual contact between victim and offender. Sexual assaults may or may not involve force and include such things as grabbing or fondling. Sexual assault also includes verbal threats." Rape is defined as “Forced sexual intercourse including both psychological coercion and physical force. Forced sexual intercourse means vaginal, anal, or oral penetration by the offender(s). This category also includes incidents where the penetration is from a foreign object, such as a bottle. Includes attempted rape, male and female victims, and both heterosexual and same sex rape. Attempted rape includes verbal threats of rape.” Because the definition of attempt is not adequately defined by the NCVS, it is open to interpretation. We live in a culture where looking at a woman too long is "stare rape."
RAINN considers every case in the estimate rape even though most have never been screened for validity. This is the same tactic used by John Walsh in the 1980s to claim "stereotypical kidnappings" were in the millions, not less than 100.
RAINN comes from the viewpoint every report must me true, without taking into account that people can lie about being crime victims, or that staring at someoneone or being asked out by an unattractive male, or regretting sleeping with a jerk is not exactly equivalent to rape.
Every screening process to endure there was an actual rape is seen as a complete and utter failure to prosecute a rape, potential false allegation be damned.
I've already dissected this silly notion that all claimed rapes are real, but maybe since more people read your stuff than mine, you could write an independent report that backs up what I've already stated here.