How to Lie with Rape Statistics: America's Hidden Rape Crisis

March 2014:

Abstract:
During the last two decades, many police departments substantially undercounted reported rapes creating "paper" reductions in crime. Media investigations in Baltimore, New Orleans, Philadelphia, and St. Louis found that police eliminated rape complaints from official counts because of cultural hostility to rape complaints and to create the illusion of success in fighting violent crime. The undercounting cities used three difficult-to-detect methods to remove rape complaints from official records: designating a complaint as "unfounded" with little or no investigation; classifying an incident as a lesser offense; and, failing to create a written report that a victim made a rape complaint.

This study addresses how widespread the practice of undercounting rape is in police departments across the country. Because identifying fraudulent and incorrect data is essentially the task of distinguishing highly unusual data patterns, I apply a statistical outlier detection technique to determine which jurisdictions have substantial anomalies in their data. Using this novel method to determine if other municipalities likely failed to report the true number of rape complaints made, I find significant undercounting of rape incidents by police departments across the country. The results indicate that approximately 22% of the 210 studied police departments responsible for populations of at least 100,000 persons have substantial statistical irregularities in their rape data indicating considerable undercounting from 1995 to 2012. Notably, the number of undercounting jurisdictions has increased by over 61% during the eighteen years studied.

Correcting the data to remove police undercounting by imputing data from highly correlated murder rates, the study conservatively estimates that 796,213 to 1,145,309 complaints of forcible vaginal rapes of female victims nationwide disappeared from the official records from 1995 to 2012. Further, the corrected data reveal that the study period includes fifteen to eighteen of the highest rates of rape since tracking of the data began in 1930. Instead of experiencing the widely reported "great decline" in rape, America is in the midst of a hidden rape crisis. Further, the techniques that conceal rape complaints deprioritize those cases so that police conduct little or no investigation. Consequently, police leave serial rapists, who constitute the overwhelming majority of rapists, free to attack more victims. Based upon the findings of this study, governments at all levels must revitalize efforts to combat the cloaked rise in sexual violence and the federal government must exercise greater oversight of the crime reporting process to ensure accuracy of the data provided. ..Source.. by Corey Rayburn Yung, University of Kansas School of Law

War on … the Fallout of Declaring War on Social Issues: Symposium Article: The Ticking Sex-Offender Bomb

December 2013 National:

Abstract:
Much like the ticking-time-bomb scenario in the public debate about torture, the belief that sex offenders generally, and child molesters specifically, will inevitably commit new offenses has come to effectively frame societal understanding.

The concept of the sex offender who is a ticking time bomb waiting to molest more children has served as the basis for sex-offender registration, residency restrictions, community notification, and civil commitment. Relying on strongly held myths about stranger danger, sex-offender recidivism, and sex-offender homogeneity, the criminal war against sex offenders shows little sign of abating.

This Symposium Article explores the rhetoric and reality of the War on Sex Offenders and how the ticking-time-bomb metaphor reshaped the debates and policies surrounding sexual violence. ..Source.. by Corey Rayburn Yung, University of Kansas School of Law

Symposium: Predators, Porn & the Law: America's Children in the Internet Era: The Disappearing Ex Post Facto Clause: From Substantive Bulwark to Procedural Nuisance

December 2013 National:

Abstract:
The growing enactment of sex offender restrictions has been one of the most notable developments in criminal law in recent decades. Thus far, courts across the country have been relatively complacent in allowing legislatures to test the limits of various civil liberties. The Ex Post Facto Clause has been among the first constitutional victims of these new laws.

Whereas the Clause was once construed as a substantive right protecting citizens against vindictive or arbitrary legislative actions often based upon the hysteria of the moment, it has become a hollow shell of its original form. Because courts have narrowly construed the purpose of the Clause to fair notice, the right underlying the Clause has ceased being substantive and become entirely process based.

The result of this transformation is that the courts have provided a set of sure-fire legislative recipes for extremely punitive criminal statutes to survive challenges based upon the Ex Post Facto Clause. ..Source.. by Corey Rayburn Yung, University of Kansas School of Law

The Emerging Criminal War on Sex Offenders

August 2009:

Abstract:
This article addresses four central questions.

First, what is the difference between normal law enforcement policy and a “war” on crime?

Second, assuming such a line can be discerned, has the enactment of the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act (“AWA”) in combination with other sex offender laws triggered a transition to a criminal war on sex offenders?

Third, if such a criminal war is emerging, what will be the likely effects of such a transition?

Fourth, if such a criminal war is emerging with substantial negative consequences, can it be stopped?

By reviewing America’s history of criminal wars, primarily in the War on Drugs, the article identifies three essential characteristics of a criminal war: marshaling of resources, myth creation, and exception making. It concludes that the federalization of sex offender policy brought about by the AWA elevated law enforcement to a nascent criminal war on sex crimes. This change could have repercussions as substantial as the drug war has had on American criminal justice and society.

For the remainder of this paper: by Corey Rayburn Yung, The John Marshall Law School

One of These Laws is Not Like the Others: Why the Federal Sex Offender and Registration and Notification Act Raises New Constitutional Questions

July 2009:

Abstract:
In 2003, the United States Supreme Court issued its only two opinions regarding the constitutionality of sex offender registration and notification statutes. The two opinions, Smith v. Doe ("Smith") and Connecticut Department of Public Safety v. Doe ("DPS"), upheld the Alaska and Connecticut registry and notification laws against Ex Post Facto Clause and due process challenges. Three years later, the federal Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act ("SORNA") was passed as part of the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act.

The federal statute was very different from the state statutes that the Court reviewed. Most notable among the differences was the creation of the federal crime of "failure to register" which was punishable by up to ten years imprisonment. Despite the significance of the disparities between the state and federal laws, district courts across the country have virtually rubber stamped the criminal provisions of SORNA as constitutional. The district courts' reasoning has been almost entirely based upon superficial, mechanical applications of the Court's decisions in Smith and DPS.

This article contends that most district courts have been severely misguided in reading the two Court opinions and the statutory provisions of SORNA. Consequently, this article concludes that either Congress should amend SORNA or courts should strike down portions of SORNA on Ex Post Facto Clause, due process, and Commerce Clause grounds.

For the remainder of this paper: by Corey Rayburn Yung, The John Marshall Law School