ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, February 10, 1997 TAG: 9702100097
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
THE WELCOME drop in crime rates in America is headlined by dramatic decreases in homicides in many of the nation's big cities. But many of those same cities, reports The Christian Science Monitor, saw a 1996 increase in another serious crime - rape - after a nationwide downturn in 1995.
One possibility: Victims' willingness to report rapes, rather than the crime itself, is what's on the rise. Homicide figures long have been regarded as the most accurate of crime statistics; rape rates, much less so. That's because, traditionally, few homicides have gone unreported or undetected, while many rapes have.
But that explanation, says The Monitor, is discounted by some experts as an explanation for the more recent rises in the rape rate. True, a healthy trend in society - to stop blaming the victim of rape and instead blame the perpetrator - did increase victims' willingness to report the crime. But this trend has reached a plateau, some believe, and can't account for the 1996 numbers.
These obsevers look elsewhere for answers - for example, to the fact that a majority of rapes are committed by acquaintances of their victims. While new community-policing and other law-enforcement techniques help hold down other kinds of crime, they have little impact on acquaintance rape.
Moreover, rape in some places draws relatively light penalties - the average time served in New York state, for example, is only three years - even though sex offenders, including rapists, are among the kinds of criminals most likely to repeat their crimes. Increasingly evident, too, is that the propensity toward sex offenses is established at a young age.
Wise public policy for crime reduction stresses prevention where possible, punishment where necessary. Of no crime does this seem truer than rape.
To reduce the number of rapists, preventive intervention must be early and vigorous. To reduce the number of rapes, convicted rapists must be kept away from the rest of society for a longer time.
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