Rape prosecution - an uphill battle

I’ve come across several stories lately pertaining to the difficulty of prosecuting rape cases. Many of you readers will have heard about the recent Nebraska trial in which the judge forbade witnesses – including the alleged victim – from using the word rape (or related words such as “victim,” “assailant,” or “sexual assault kit”). That trial resulted in a hung jury.

You are less likely to have heard about international data coming out of New Zealand, Australia, Great Britain, Scotland, and elsewhere about astonishingly low rape conviction rates in recent years. For example, data from Victoria, NZ indicate that only one of six rapes reported to police proceeds to prosecution and less than one-fourth of those result in a rape conviction. With only a tiny proportion of rapes being reported in the first place, this attrition has led to what some call the “virtual decriminalization” of sexual violence.

While these stories were coming across my desk this month, I happened to be in the middle of a provocative analysis by law professor and former sexual assault prosecutor Andrew Taslitz. Rape and the Culture of the Courtroom uses social science research to explain why rape prosecutions remain so difficult, despite the rape reform laws of the 1980s. Through linguistic analysis of actual cases, Taslitz shows how subtle innuendos, proxies, and other linguistic devices can cue jurors to place the victim into certain cultural narratives, such as that of “slut” or “scorned woman” – in other words, “liar.”

Taslitz’ linguistic analysis jives with my experiences in court. When I’ve been retained as an expert for the government (prosecution) in rape cases in which the defense was consent, I’ve been amazed at how rarely jurors convict even when the evidence is pretty solid and the woman has no plausible reason to lie. Taslitz emphasizes that even jurors who are consciously pro-feminist may fall prey to appeals to subconscious cultural scripts about virtuous womanhood.

Taslitz’ blueprint for legislative reforms includes such controversial ideas as allowing rape victims to present their stories in an uninterrupted narrative, using “intermediaries” rather than defense attorneys to question the victims, and having linguistic experts explain to jurors the effects of subconscious biases on decision-making.

My full review of the book is on Amazon.

The Nebraska trial of Pamir Safi, an Army reservist, is featured at Time Magazine’s online site.

Photo credit: fabbio (Creative Commons license).

Emotions and prisoner reintegration

Now that the punishment pendulum appears to have hit its most extreme, the new buzzword in criminology is "reintegration." How can criminal recidivism be reduced by helping newly released prisoners succeed? As I've previously posted, more resources are being devoted to projects aimed at assisting prisoners transition, through job training, housing, and mental health services.

A new study out of Australia looks at the role of a prisoner’s emotional state. The study, funded by the Criminology Research Council and available from the Australian Institute of Criminology, examines the association between successful reintegration and the emotions of depression, anger and anxiety.

Photo credit: Carf (Creative Commons License)

New report on racial disparities in sentencing

The Sentencing Project has issued a new report, “Uneven Justice: State Rates of Incarceration by Race and Ethnicity.” The study found that African Americans were incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of whites and Latinos at nearly double the rate. The 23-page report is based on data from five states in the Northeast and Midwest. The report recommends “addressing disparities through changes in drug policy, mandatory sentencing laws, reconsideration of “race neutral” policies, and changes in resource allocation.”

Rand study: Mental health court cost-effective

People with mental illnesses are vastly overrepresented in prisons and jails.

In a promising attempt to rectify this problem, mental health courts have sprung up around the United States in the past decade. These courts are designed to divert nonviolent, mentally ill offenders out of their pattern of cyclical incarceration through individually tailored treatment programs.

In 1997, there were only four such courts nationwide. In 2004, the courts got a boost with passage of the federal Mentally Ill Offender Treatment and Crime Reduction Act, which authorized $50 million for states and counties to establish more mental health courts and provide other mental health resources to prisoners. Now, there are dozens of courts. As I write, one is even getting off the ground in my own county (Contra Costa County, California).

Because the courts are relatively new, they have not been widely studied. Now, the imminently respectable Rand Corporation has weighed in with a new study on the fiscal side of one such court, the Allegheny County Mental Health Court in Pennsylvania.

The study’s bottom-line conclusion: Sending people to treatment instead of to jail has the potential to save the taxpayers money.

The full report, “Justice, Treatment, and Cost,” is available online.

For more information on the movement toward reducing prison expansion through model prisoner reentry programs, see the web site of the Re-Entry Policy Council, a public/private partnership involving the U.S. departments of Justice, Labor, and Health.

New Report: Anti-Gang Strategy Failing Badly

From today's Washington Post:

"Anti-gang legislation and police crackdowns are failing so badly that they
are strengthening the criminal organizations and making U.S. cities more
dangerous, according to a report being released Wednesday.

"Mass arrests, stiff prison sentences often served with other gang
members and other strategies that focus on law enforcement rather than
intervention actually strengthen gang ties and further marginalize angry young
men, according to the Justice Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank
that advocates alternatives to incarceration.

" 'We're talking about 12-, 13-, 14-, 15-year-olds whose involvement in
gangs is likely to be ephemeral unless they are pulled off the street and put in
prison, where they will come out with much stronger gang allegiances,' said
Judith Greene, co-author of Gang Wars: The Failure of Enforcement Tactics and the Need for Effective Public Safety Strategies."

Link to the full Post article.

ForenSnips

Model prisoner reentry program

New York has been selected as one of seven states to receive a grant from the National Institute of Corrections to implement a model prisoner reentry program. The goal is to reduce recidivism “by promoting an effective transition process through the coordination of criminal justice and human service programming.”

See the full article in the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle.

Book review

A review of Jonathan Simon’s new book, Governing Through Crime: How The War On Crime Transformed American Democracy And Created A Culture Of Fear (Oxford University Press), is online at the the Law and Politics Book Review, sponsored by the Law and Courts Section of the American Political Science Association.