Impact of Rape Reform Legislation in Six Major Urban Jurisdictions in the United States, 1970-1985

Despite the fact that most states enacted rape reform
legislation by the mid-1980s, empirical research on the effect of
these laws was conducted in only four states and for a limited time
span following the reform. The purpose of this study was to provide
both increased breadth and depth of information about the effect of
the rape law changes and the legal issues that surround them. Statistical data on all rape cases between 1970
and 1985 in Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, Houston, Philadelphia, and
Washington, DC, were collected from court records. Monthly time-series
analyses were used to assess the impact of the reforms on rape
reporting, indictments, convictions, incarcerations, and
sentences. The study also sought to determine if particular changes,
or particular combinations of changes, affected the case processing
and disposition of sexual assault cases and whether the effect of the
reforms varied with the comprehensiveness of the changes. In each
jurisdiction, data were collected on all forcible rape cases for which
an indictment or information was filed. In addition to forcible rape,
other felony sexual assaults that did not involve children were
included. The names and definitions of these crimes varied from
jurisdiction to jurisdiction. To compare the pattern of rape reports
with general crime trends, reports of robbery and felony assaults
during the same general time period were also obtained from the
Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) from the Federal Bureau of Investigation
when available. For the adjudicated case data (Parts 1, 3, 5, 7, 9,
and 11), variables include month and year of offense, indictment,
disposition, four most serious offenses charged, total number of
charges indicted, four most serious conviction charges, total number
of conviction charges, type of disposition, type of sentence, and
maximum jail or prison sentence. The time series data (Parts 2, 4, 6,
8, 10, and 12) provide year and month of indictment, total indictments
for rape only and for all sex offenses, total convictions and
incarcerations for all rape cases in the month, for those on the
original rape charge, for all sex offenses in the month, and for those
on the original sex offense charge, percents for each indictment,
conviction, and incarceration category, the average maximum sentence
for each incarceration category, and total police reports of forcible
rape in the month. Interviews were also conducted in each site with
judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys, and this information is
presented in Part 13. These interviewees were asked to rate the importance
of various types of evidence in sexual assault cases and to respond to
a series of six hypothetical cases in which evidence of the victim's past
sexual history was at issue. Respondents were also presented with a
hypothetical case for which some factors were varied to create 12 different
scenarios, and they were asked to make a set
of judgments about each. Interview
data also include respondent's title, sex, race, age, number of years
in office, and whether the respondent was in office before and/or after the
reform.

Tags: case-processing, convictions-law, disposition-legal, law-reform, rape, rape-statistics, sentencing, sexual-assault
Organization: Department of Justice