Our final project was to choose a topic that interested us and write a research paper on it. I chose Sexual assault as that is something that has been a big focus in one of the many things that I am against.
Quantitative Reasoning Final Project:
By Sakura Smith
Professor Carol Overby
2016
Sexual Assault happens in one in five women and one in 71 men, which is occurring too frequently. In this paper I will compare laws regarding sexual harassment in 3 states across the US (Alaska, Delaware, and New York) to see what laws prove to be most effective. The reasoning behind my choice of these three states in particular is because I utilized previously gained knowledge and understanding on this matter, and referred to a diversity in which I believed could show a variety of sides on this topic. This is a very important topic because if we can see what laws are the most impactful in correlation to sexual assault happening, there is a way that states can further protect their citizens.
It is important to state that rape is the most underreported crime in the Unites States according to RAINN and National Crime Victimization Survey conducted by the United States Justice Department. “Only 344 out of every 1,000 sexual assaults are reported to police. That means about 2 out of 3 go unreported.” More often than not, people choose to not report sexaul assult because they feared retaliation (20%), and because they believe that the police will not help them (13%).
Research Questions:
Is there correlation between laws and how much sexual assault is happening in the state?
What states and laws are most correlated with lower sexual assault?
In order to accomplish this, I will look at the laws in Delaware, New York, and Alaska’s laws and compare them. I found these on Find.Laws.com, which compiles all of their information from the states directly. I will then be looking at the sentencings for each state, comparing them next to each other, as well as a comparison on the age of consent in each state. Another graph will also show the comparison of recorded rape in each state and the population in a histogram.
Hypothesis:
I predict that states with stricter punishments towards sexual assault will have lower options. I believe this because if a state has a weak sentencing, it will not really stop the awful people committing this crime.
This table below organizes how each state stands on different aspects of laws concerning sexual assault.
This bar graph compares the reported forcible rapes per 100,000 people in 2012.
a
2012 FBI Crime Estimates
This graph below shows a comparison of arrests and convictions in each state in 2012.
RAINN and National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS)
This graph above shows how low convictions actually are compared to how many to how many people are arrested. The percentage of people who are actually convicted after arrest in each state are 7% New York, 63% in Delaware, and about 7% in Alaska.
This seems to make sense as both New York and Alaska both have very low ages of consent and weaker punishments compared to Delaware. But compared to population in New York, Alaska does have about an 80% higher percentage of rape per 100,000 people. This all only goes to show a correlation between laws/punishments to the occurrences of rape reported and if punishments are actually being carried out.
- “only about one out of four reported rapes leads to an arrest, and only about one out of four arrests leads to a felony conviction and incarceration.” (RAINN)
Conclusion
Although it would be best to look at all 50 states to confirm this, States that make harsher laws are able to protect their citizens better.
States that have harsher punishments also seem to have less recorded sexual assault, such as Delaware. While Alaska has 3x as much rape than the national average (FBI crime data) because of their less strict laws on this.
If I were to go forward in researching this, it would be beneficial to compare all 50 states to see which is the most protective in terms of sexual assault, and how they are accomplishing this.
Another thing that I think is important to keep in mind is that I have collected the best data I can for this study, and thus made indications and conclusions from these findings.
It is important to state that though most in states it is very simple to find matter addressing this problem, Alaska at times made it hard to find data as they don’t produce/care much about that data. This is why 2012 was the year chose to keep everything equal in population/sexaul assault happening.
Sources:
Rain.org
The NCVS
Bureau of Justice Statistics: http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/SOO.PDF
NCPA
Alaska State Public Safety :http://dps.alaska.gov/statewide/docs/UCR/UCR_2012.pdf
Delaware state justice dept: http://cjc.delaware.gov/sac/pdf/Crime/Crime_DE_2008-12_November%202013.pdf
Alaska : https://ovr.akleg.gov/docs/HB%20134%20Report.pdf
New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault http://www.svfreenyc.org/research_measuring_3.html
