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ABSTRACT
Sexual assault case attrition research has been consistent in documenting that sexual assault complaints fall out of the system at disturbing rates. In this article, we describe a pathway to attrition where managerial concerns incentivize case processing outcomes that remove cases early in the system and scaffolds a decision-making context where rape myth adherence provides sustained rationalizations for closing cases. Using data on sexual assault incidents reported to the police, we present a quantitative analysis that investigates such a pathway to attrition that considers how police and prosecutors work together at the pre-arrest stage and the extent to which this practice facilitates the use of exceptional clearance police classification to close sexual assault investigations.
KEYWORDS:
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. Data were collected after 2013 to track cases through adjudication. Unfounded incidents were excluded from the analysis.
2. Not all kits were submitted for testing. We included this measure as a potential indicator of biological evidence given past research has found that kit collection significantly predicts arrest (Bouffard, Citation2000).
3. A reliability check at the beginning of the coding process across jurisdictions revealed moderate to high reliability estimates overall. Instructions for coding were reviewed and clarified to address inconsistencies. Follow-up checks on coding were conducted by team members to preserve reliability.
4. Agencies were provided anonymity as a condition of participation. The six jurisdictions we consider are from four states representing the west, south, and the northeast. They vary in population size ranging from under 150 K to over 600 k. The number of officers range from under 300 to over 1000 sworn personnel. All but one jurisdiction has a special unit that investigates sexual assaults. The individual sites varied in the percentage of cases that went to the prosecutor for a pre-arrest consultation that ranged from 15%-48%. Smaller agencies did not have enough cases to statistically account for clustering of cases within agencies.
5. Four percent of the exceptionally cleared cases that went for a pre-arrest consult were exceptionally cleared with the documented reason that the victim refused to cooperate. Since these cases were sent for a pre-arrest review, they were retained in the analysis.
6. A multicollinearity test revealed Variance Inflation Values were below a value of 4. Missing values of the independent variables ranged from 0 to 3%. Listwise deletion was applied to the sequential logistic regression model.
7. Spohn and Tellis (Citation2012) found that some cases were exceptionally cleared by prosecutorial decline after an arrest was made, indicating that classification practice was being misused. We also found evidence of this practice, where 13% of the cases that were exceptionally cleared by prosecutorial decline appeared to take place after an arrest was made. While these findings suggest that the exceptional clearance policy dictated by the FBI is not always being used as intended, they also serve as another supporting example of how the police prosecutor relationship is working to remove cases through exceptional clearance.