Journal ArticleDOI
Official Reactions to Social Problems: Police Decisions in Sexual Assault Cases
TLDR
In this article, the authors tested three competing models of police decisions: the legal model suggests that police do not discriminate between victims on the basis of extralegal attributes; the extralega-al model suggests police do discriminate; and the change model suggests reliance on extralegal determinants declines with growing awareness of rape as a social problem.Abstract:
Responsibility for arrest and charging makes police influential agents in the offical processing of sexual-assault cases. Recent research offers three competing models of police decisions: the legal model suggests that police do not discriminate between victims on the basis of extralegal attributes; the extralegal model suggests that police do discriminate; and the change model suggests that reliance on extralegal determinants declines with growing awareness of rape as a social problem. These models were tested on 905 sexual-assault complaints to police in a large, midwestern city over six years. The data showed that the most important determinants of arrest, charge seriousness and felony screening were legal. Suspects received more serious outcomes when: (1) the victim was able to identify a suspect, (2) the victim was willing to testify, (3) the incident included sexual penetration, (4) charges were more serious, and (5) the incident included a weapon. Extralegal variables had less effect than legal variables on all three police decisions. Also, reorganization of the police department did not change arrest and felony filing rates or, for the most part, criteria used for making processing decisions.read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
Discrediting Victims' Allegations of Sexual Assault: Prosecutorial Accounts of Case Rejections
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine prosecutorial accounts for sexual assault case rejection and reveal the indigenous logic of prosecutors' decisions to reject cases and the organizational structure in which these decisions are situated.
Journal ArticleDOI
Sexual Assault Cases in the Legal System: Police, Prosecutor, and Victim Perspectives
Patricia A. Frazier,Beth Haney +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors assess the extent of attrition in the processing of sexual assault cases in the legal systems, factors associated with attrition at various stages in the process, and the relations between these experiences and recovery.
Journal ArticleDOI
Causes of police behavior revisited
TL;DR: A review of the causes of police behavior in the United States can be found in this article, where the authors highlight the gaps in the findings and suggest what issues need to be addressed in future research.
Book
Law enforcement in a time of community policing
TL;DR: In this article, the authors used data from ride-along observations in a police department in the city of Richmond, Virginia, where the police department was implementing community policing and found that pro-community-policing officers are like negative officers in the extent of influence exerted by extralegal factors.
Journal ArticleDOI
Beyond Belief? Police, Rape and Women’s Credibility
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors review issues concerning perceptions of women's credibility in the context of police responses to sexual assault complainants and present a qualitative and quantitative analysis based on both quantitative and qualitative data.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
Against our will : men, women, and rape
TL;DR: In this article, the authors trace the use and meaning of rape from Biblical times through to Bangladesh and Vietnam, unravels the origins of rape laws in medieval codes and examines interracial and homosexual rape and child molestation.
Book
Statistical methods for social scientists
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a model for estimating models with Erroneous and Unobserved Variables, as well as a model with Discrete Dependent Variables.
Journal ArticleDOI
The American Jury
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