Why Crime Rates Continue to Grow in the US - Essay Example

RESEARCH PROPOSAL By 25 July Research Proposal Introduction Despite the inclusion of severe capital punishment measures in a society crime rates continue to grow. Rapes constitute one of the major problems in both criminology and law. Statistically, the United States ranks the ninth in the list of the world countries with the highest levels of rapes per capita – 0.30 per 1,000 people (Anonymous 2010). In the United States, almost 1.5 women are raped every minute, with around 80 women raped every hour (Cease 2010). Almost 685,000 rapes in America are committed every year (Cease 2010). One out of three American women are assaulted at least once during their lifetime (Cease 2010). Every seventh woman is raped by her husband, and every fourth female college student is raped or threatened to be raped (Cease 2010). The statistics is threatening, given the growing number of laws against rape, including capital punishment measures. For this reason, there is an urgent need to understand what gaps in the current law make it difficult to reduce the number and the scope of rapes in the society. It is necessary to identify and understand a causal link between the law and the extent of sexual crime. In simplest terms, the proposed research will identify possible gaps in law that make it possible for individuals to commit sexual crimes without the fear of being punished for them. The researcher expects that the research will become (a) the first step in the subsequent observation of the rape law in America and the world; and (b) will provide recommendations to help the society improve the state of rape law and, as a result, to reduce the scope of rapes and sexual assaults against women. Research question The research question is “Why despite the inclusion of severe capital punishment as a punishing measure in a society crime rates continue to grow? In connection with the research question, the following issues become the object of the research analysis: The current state of rape law; The number of rapes and the comparative statistics for the past 20 years; The most frequent measures of punishment for rapes; The number of those who were not punished but were suspected of having committed a rape or a sexual assault; The strengths and weaknesses of the current rape law; Possible legal reasons behind the growing crime rates. The statistics of rape and sexual assault is the major justification for the proposed research. More importantly, the current state of literature does not provide a single relevant answer as for why laws do not work to improve the crime situation in the context of rape and sexual assaults. The main purpose of the proposed study is to create a precedent, which combines criminology and legal studies and provides a comprehensive overview of the possible reasons of the growing sex crime. Literature review It would be fair to say that the current state of literature does not provide a single relevant answer as for why the inclusion of severe punishment and capital punishment measures in law does not deter rapes and sexual assault against women. Nevertheless, literature creates a comprehensive view of the complex legal picture in America, Europe, and the rest of the world. Based on these findings, the researcher assumes that not a single but multiple legal reasons may be potentially responsible for the low rates of the sex crime deterrence. To begin with, literature sources do not provide any single of rape or sexual assault; more importantly, researchers claim and describe the difficulties which courts and the present day legal system face in their striving to categorize various types of sex crime actions. For example, courts face a challenge in their striving to identify and categorize the so-called “forcible sex offences” (Pringle 2009). Another question is in whether rape may be understood as “a crime of violence sufficient to elicit maximum enhancement under the current law “(Pringle 2009). Despite the evolution of the rape law, judges themselves often reduce sentences and the severity of punishment for rapes and aggravated sexual assaults, based on the premise of humanism and reason: recently, the Supreme Court of the United States has officially concluded that capital punishment cannot be applied to rapists, whose victims were not killed (CNN 2008). Another difficulty with interpreting and applying the current law to sexual assaults and rapes is in that victims may not always choose to report the facts of crime to law enforcement authorities (Clay-Warner & McMahon-Howard 2009). Such reluctance is often justified by the fact that women are being raped by their spouses (McMahon-Howard, Clay-Warner & Renzulli 2009). The situation is further complicated by the differences in male and female behaviours regarding sexual assault (Vandiver 2010) and the growing number of self-reported false confessions (Redlich, Summers & Hoover 2010). Finally, the emergence of the cyber gender harassment makes the need for developing more effective laws even more urgent (Citron 2009). Researchers recognize that a variety of factors may be responsible for the effectiveness of rape law and rape law reforms in different countries. Vaillant and Wolff (2010) suggest that criminal justice systems concentrate on rapes and pay less attention to less severe sexual offences. Nelaeva (2010) refers to the problems in the meaning of rape and its relation to the crimes against humanity in the international law; her ideas are also supported by Joseph (2008). Frank, Hardinge and Wosick-Correa (2009) try to prove that rape law reforms will be more effective in countries with hither police reporting, higher levels of individualism, female mobility, education, wealth, and dense linkages to the world society. Nevertheless, it is difficult not to agree to Pether (2009) in that “there is little hope of this law reform initiative reducing rape attrition”. As a result, the task is to identify the possible reasons of the major rape law failures and the ways of resolving them. Methodology The proposed research will combine the benefits of primary and secondary information research. Secondary research implies the detailed review of literature and crime statistics. Primary research will seek to link criminology to law; as a result, two groups of participants will be involved: offenders (criminology) and legal professionals (law). The sample of offenders will include individuals that had been accused or suspected of rape or sexual assault but for various reasons had been released from punishment by court. Legal professionals will include specialists in rape law and rape studies, who have the detailed knowledge of rape law and can provide ideas regarding its improvement. The choice of surveys is justified by the need to better measure and operationalize the current state of rape crimes in society and to investigate the possible reasons of why rape crimes go without punishment (Maxfield & Babbie 2008). Timescale 1. The development of the research question, aims, and methodology (research design) – 2 weeks. 2. Sampling procedures – 3-4 weeks. 3. The process of surveying the two sample groups – 10 days. 4. The analysis of results – 2 weeks. 5. Developing recommendations and conclusions – 1 week. References Anonymous 2010, ‘Crime statistics – Rapes’, accessed online, http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_rap_percap-crime-rapes-per-capita Cease 2010, ‘Rape statistics’, accessed online, http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~ad361896/anne/cease/rapestatisticspage.html Citron, DK 2009, ‘Law’s expressive value in combating cyber gender harassment’, Michigan Law Review, vol. 108, 373-415. Clay-Warner, J & McMahon-Howard, J 2009, ‘Rape reporting: Classic rape and the behavior of law’, Violence and Victims, vol. 24, no. 6, pp. 723-743. CNN 2008, ‘Child rapists can’t be executed, Supreme Court rules’, CNN, accessed online, http://edition.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/06/25/scotus.child.rape/index.html Frank, DJ, Hardinge, T & Wosick-Correa, K 2009, ‘The global dimensions of rape-law reform: A cross-national study of policy outcomes’, American Sociological Review, vol. 74, no. 2, pp. 272-290. Joseph, JH 2008, ‘Gender and international law: How the international criminal court can bring justice to victims of sexual violence’, Texas Journal of Women and the Law, vol. 18, no. 1, pp. 61-101. Maxfield, MG & Babbie, ER 2008, Basics of research methods for criminal justice and criminology, Cengage Learning. McMahon-Howard, J, Clay-Warner, J & Renzulli, L 2009, ‘Criminalizing spousal rape: The diffusion of legal reforms’, Sociological Perspectives, vol. 52, no. 4, pp. 505-531. Nelaeva, G 2010, ‘The impact of transnational advocacy networks on the prosecution of wartime rape and sexual violence’, International Social Science Review, vol. 85, no. 1-2, pp. 3-27. Pether, P 2009, ‘What is due to others: Speaking and signifying subjects of rape law’, Griffith Law Review, vol. 18, no. 2, pp. 238-258. Pringle, A 2009, ‘Enhancing sentences for past crimes of violence: The unlikely intersection of illegal reentry and sex crimes’, The Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology, vol. 99, no. 4, pp. 1195-1225. Redlich, AD, Summers, A & Hoover, S 2010, ‘Self-reported false confessions and false guilty pleas among offenders with mental illness’, Law Hum Behav, vol. 34, pp. 79-90. Vaillant, NG & Wolff, FC 2010, ‘Does punishment of minor sexual offences deter rapes? Longitudinal evidence from France’, European Journal of Law and Economics, vol. 30, pp. 59-71. Vandiver, DM 2010, ‘Assessing gender differences and co-offending patterns of a predominantly ‘male-oriented’ crime: A comparison of a cross-national sample of juvenile boys and girls arrested for a sexual offense’, Violence and Victims, vol. 25, no. 2, pp. 243-264. Read More