According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, crimes are recorded per arrests made per person and for each separate offense reported in the US. In effect, even if a person was arrested multiple number of times, the agency would only take records of the crime committed and not the identification of the offender. That makes taking statistical summary of criminal activities in the country quite interesting. This paper, therefore, would try to give a summarized view of reported rape cases in the US for the reporting years of 2012 and 2013. In the summary, all the demographic indicators would be examined.
Rape, according to the FBI’s standards would be defined as having a forced carnal knowledge of a female without her consent. The statistical results reported does not, however, include rape cases that were not forced on the victim also referred to as statutory rape. In 2012 for instance, the rate of forcible rape stood at 29.8 percent. This percentage was 0.7 percent higher than the successive year of 2013 that reported 29.1 percent forcible rape cases.
According to the FBI’s statistics, as many as 74.9 percent of white men raped white women in the year 2013. In these cases, the rapists were reported to be 16.4 percent blacks where the victim was a white woman. Where the victim was black, there was 0.00 percentage of white rapists reported over the same period of time.
In contrast, there was 74.9 percent reporting of the rapists being black where the victim was also black. This was a drop to the percentages realized in the previous year, 2012 where it was estimated that the percentages stood at 75.1 for white to white, 16.6 for black to white and 75.2 for black to black related rape cases.
The statistical results indicate that the highest numbers of rape cases were reported in women between the ages of 13 to 30 years while in men, the reported age was between 16 and 50 years. Generally, rape cases were concentrated at the ages of between 18 and 35 years at 72 percent. The results further showed that in regards to gender, as many females were reported to be victims in rape cases as compared to males, at 65 percent of the victims being females. Further, it was reported that many unmarried people were involved in rape cases as compared to their married counterparts at an average of 58 percent.
Unemployment also contributed to rape cases that were reported in the two reporting years. In as much as unemployed people were reported to be rape offenders as opposed to victims. The victims were mostly employed people in the period under scrutiny. The socioeconomic class also had its fair share in the cases reported. Most cases that were reported occurred in the lower and in some cases middle class dwellings as opposed to high class dwellings. This was attributable to social status where the offenders were mostly people from the lower classes of the society.
These results seem to be believable as the demographic factors that were considered in their compilation seem to support their arguments. As stated above more youths were more likely to be offenders in rape cases as was more males than females.
In the results, whites seemed to be overrepresented on the victims’ side. This could be attributed to the nation as it is a mainly white dominated nation. Blacks seemed to be more on the offenders’ side. This seemed to suggest that socioeconomic class as well as frustrations seem to drive people to criminal activities including rape.
References.
US department of Justice - FBI, (2013). Retrieved on 2nd December 2014, from: http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2008
US department of Justice - FBI, (2012). Retrieved on 2nd December 2014, from: http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2009/crime2009
