Poor Investigation Leads to Few Rape Convictions
By Ian Harte JRN-100 Staff Writer Very few sexual assault cases lead to conviction, in part because law enforcement continues to doubt the credibility of victims, a recent study found. The trend will continue until the law is changed to encourage objective data-based investigations, said April Pattavina, a criminology professor at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell and one of the authors of the study Decision Making in Sexual Assault Cases: Replication Research on Sexual Violence Case Attrition in the U.S. She also believes that there would be fewer credibility issues if investigators spent more time working with victims. “We need to understand more about victim cooperation and determine if we can ultimately reduce the rate of case attrition [or, failure of arrests to come to trial] by engaging victims in the criminal justice system and encouraging them to be receptive to following through with prosecution of their assailants,” the study’s researchers concluded. Only...