The demented ravings of Elliot Rodger posted on Youtube just before his murderous rampage have heightened the ongoing debate about violence against women and the climate which enables and supports it. Feminists often use the term rape culture to characterize it. There is a counter attack from groups such as the Men's Rights Movement using various crime reporting statistics which indicate a sustained statistical trend reflecting a decline in the occurrence of incidents of rape over the past 40 years. They use such statistics to dismiss the notion of a rape culture as unfounded feminist propaganda.
Here is a Washington Post article that looks at the issue from different perspectives. It was published in 2006, but the issues and data have not really changed since then.
Statistics Show Drop In U.S. Rape Cases
The number of rapes per capita in the United States has plunged by more than 85 percent since the 1970s, and reported rape fell last year even while other violent offenses increased, according to federal crime data.
This seemingly stunning reduction in sexual violence has been so consistent over the past two decades that some experts say they have started to believe it is accurate, even if they cannot fully explain why it is occurring.
In 1979, according to a Justice Department estimate based on a wide-ranging public survey, there were 2.8 rapes for every 1,000 people. In 2004, the same survey found that the rate had decreased to 0.4 per thousand.
Many criminologists and victims' advocates say that these numbers could be a statistical mirage, because rape is still underreported and poorly understood. But others say they have been convinced that there is real improvement and that a devastating crime has been receding from American life.
Not everyone is convinced that things are getting that much better. Many who work with rape victims say they do not believe there has been a widespread decline in the number of attacks. Instead -- despite the years of attempted outreach to rape victims -- they say the crime may be as hidden now as ever.
"If there's been a change, it's been a very small change," said Dean Kilpatrick, director of the National Crime Victims Research and Treatment Center in Charleston, S.C. He said that recent high-profile rape cases such as those involving Duke University lacrosse players and basketball star Kobe Bryant may have persuaded rape victims to stay silent because of public scrutiny of the accusers' private lives and sexual history.
There are many issues that make this a very complex and difficult issue to analyze. One of them is the matter of definitions. Traditionally rape has been limited to complete genital penetration. However, the notions of sexual violence and sexual assault are much broader. The FBI has only recently modified its the definition is uses in crime reports.
There are substantial questions about the accuracy of the various official statistical reports. One only has to look at employment statistics to observe the tendency of government institutions to cook the books. I found a lengthy scholarly article that conducted some in depth analysis of statistics on sexual violence.
How to Lie with Rape Statistics: America’s Hidden Rape Crisis
It was written by Corey Rayburn Yung who is on the faculty of the University of Kansas School of Law. Here is the abstract for the article.
ABSTRACT: During the last two decades, many police departments substantially undercounted reported rapes creating “paper” reductions in crime. Media investigations in Baltimore, New Orleans, Philadelphia, and St. Louis found that police eliminated rape complaints from official counts because of cultural hostility to rape complaints and to create the illusion of success in fighting violent crime. The undercounting cities used three difficult-to-detect methods to remove rape complaints from official records: designating a complaint as “unfounded” with little or no investigation; classifying an incident as a lesser offense; and, failing to create a written report that a victim made a rape complaint.
This study addresses how widespread the practice of undercounting rape is in police departments across the country. Because identifying fraudulent and incorrect data is essentially the task of distinguishing highly unusual data patterns, I apply a statistical outlier detection technique to determine which jurisdictions have substantial anomalies in their data. Using this novel method to determine if other municipalities likely failed to report the true number of rape complaints made, I find significant undercounting of rape incidents by police departments across the country. The results indicate that approximately 22% of the 210 studied police departments responsible for populations of at least 100,000 persons have substantial statistical irregularities in their rape data indicating considerable undercounting from 1995 to 2012. Notably, the number of undercounting jurisdictions has increased by over 61% during the eighteen years studied.
Correcting the data to remove police undercounting by imputing data from highly correlated murder rates, the study conservatively estimates that 796,213 to 1,145,309 complaints of forcible vaginal rapes of female victims nationwide disappeared from the official records from 1995 to 2012. Further, the corrected data reveal that the study period includes fifteen to eighteen of the highest rates of rape since tracking of the data began in 1930. Instead of experiencing the widely reported “great decline” in rape, America is in the midst of a hidden rape crisis. Further, the techniques that conceal rape complaints deprioritize those cases so that police conduct little or no investigation. Consequently, police leave serial rapists, who constitute the overwhelming majority of rapists, free to attack more victims. Based upon the findings of this study, governments at all levels must revitalize efforts to combat the cloaked rise in sexual violence and the federal government must exercise greater oversight of the crime reporting process to ensure accuracy of the data provided.
One would need to do a close reading of the research to evaluate the statistical methods that were employed. Statistics are a murky business and should never be taken at face value one way or another. However, I find this study worth taking seriously. We know that issues about gender and power relationships are something about which almost nobody is neutral and detached. They carry a high level of emotional voltage for all of us.
There is plenty of evidence of bias in the way that sexual violence is dealt with. Criminal cases are difficult to investigate and even more difficult to prosecute. We have seen documented cases of friends and supporters conspiring in cover ups on behalf of the accused, e.g. Stubenville. I think that until we are able to have a more open and honest public conversation about the subject we are not is a position to develop a clear and coherent understanding of what is going on.