The Untested Rape Kits and Serial Rapists

Rape is a terrible crime. The fact that police and law enforcement don't take it seriously enough has been known for a long time. I have always been sympathetic, but also recognized some problems. There are false allegations, and the criminal justice system's "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard means it's not so easy to get a conviction. For any crime, our system rightly allows many guilty people to go free to prevent one innocent person from being wrongfully convicted.

But in a recent <article in theAtlantic> there was new information that presented a completely clear opportunity. The article noted that with DNA testing, it was now possible to find matches in multiple rape kits to find serial rapists. There is reasonable doubt as to whether any particular sexual encounter was consensual, but if four unrelated women all report rape by the same individual, as revealed by DNA tests, reasonable doubt vanishes.

In 2015, the Obama administration provided funding to go through the backlog of untested kids. The good news is that hundreds of serial rapists have been convicted. The bad news is that that is a tiny fraction of serial rapists, and that 82% of them have been in just two cities, Cleveland and Detroit.

Other jurisdictions have simply been reluctant to take the funds and do the work. Part is the longstanding problem that police and other relevant parties don't think that rape is all that serious. But what about the many who believe passionately that rape is very serious? They may have rightly perceived that they are part of a system that will not produce convictions. A zealous police department that religiously tests all its rape kits won't produce results if prosecutors won't prosecute. Zealous prosecutors may have no effect if juries (as instructed by judges) won't convict.

With DNA testing, suddenly the landscape is very different. A former Cleveland prosecutor says, "I don’t think there will ever be another time in history when so many criminals can be arrested so easily, so quickly, so inexpensively, and with such certainty". We need political pressure on all the relevant parties in the criminal justice system to recognize this, test the kits, and get serial rapists off the streets. Hopefully it will also have a deterrent effect on potential future serial rapists.

The article also contains the quote, "How many rapes could have been prevented if police had believed the first victim? How many women would have been spared a brutal assault?" That line of thinking muddies the waters in addressing the old problem, not the new opportunity. We shouldn't automatically believe anyone or disbelieve anyone, but look carefully at the evidence to decide whether they are right or not. The "reasonable doubt" standard doesn't work on just believing every victim's allegation. I have no doubt that more single-rape cases should be prosecuted and more men convicted. But there are no new facts bearing on this old problem.

The new fact is the ease of matching the DNA from multiple rape kits. You don't have to believe any one victim. The serial rapists waiting to be discovered by DNA testing are low-hanging fruit just waiting to be plucked.