There are several types of crimes within our societies. The crimes are characterized by various aspects that are used in coming up with the punishment for the different offenses. Rape and burglary are among the various crimes in a society and their differences outweigh their similarities.
When defining rape, there are some provisions that require the court to examine the possibility that the victim provoked the suspect into committing the offense. For instance, the mode of dressing of a woman can be used against the victim if she had dressed in a sexually provocative manner during the time when the crime occurred. Additionally, the influence of drugs on the part of the woman might be used to dismiss a certain rape case on the basis that the woman might have seduced the man into sleeping with her (Barlow 18; Schiffman and Edwards, 88). On the other hand, there are no certain factors that can be used to incriminate the victim-the robbers or rather criminals carry all the blame for the offense.
The reaction of the police to crime victims affects the reporting of rape cases to the authority. Because of the stigma associated with rape and because police have often been insensitive to rape victims’ emotions, the percentages of rapes reported to the police is about the lowest of the Uniform Crime Report index crimes (Barlow 23). In addition, the national Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) has discovered that there are typically too few cases of rape reported to provide precise measures of that offense. On the other hand, burglary victims do not hesitate to report the incidence to the police.
Aside from statistical and sampling issues that may undermine the ability to attain accurate rape prevalence rates among groups of women, the influence of history and culture is arguably more powerful. Some of the aspects associated with this case include stereotyping e.g. the case of slavery and African American women (Wandall 12). Applied to intimate partner violence, which is often interracial, these issues are crucial when considering the perceptions of a victim, forces shaping masculinity and their relationship to partner abuse and cultural pressures experienced by women of color (Neal 70). This does not apply with cases of burglary.
Age is a very important aspect that should be considered when defining rape unlike the case with burglary. Specifically, research has shown that 22% of rape victims were raped when they were younger than twelve years and 32% were between the ages of twelve and seventeen (Wandall 22). However, age is not used as a factor when judging the vulnerability of the victims of burglary.
The severity of the crime, the prior criminal record and age of the criminal and the social circumstances of the defendant are some of the factors that the court considers when deciding the sentence given to the criminal. These are applied in dealing with burglary as the parameters can be easily measured (Neal 66). However, it does not apply in the cases of rape as there are no measures that have been established to determine the level of some of the elements e.g. the severity of rape. This is because all rape cases result into a given outcome, which has no levels-the damage physical, emotional and psychological cannot be ranked (Wandall 9).
Several aspects can be used to measure the two crimes. Sexual assault i.e. rape is typically measured through prevalence and incidence rates in either clinical, community or college samples. Generating reliable and valid estimates is completed by the following methodological challenges: underreporting of crimes involving intimates, how to define rape, and reference points (Schiffman, and Edwards 102). The indicators as well as the actual reporting of cases of burglary can be used to measure the extend of the crime. For instance, the sale and installation of home alarm systems is one of the major indicators of the rate of the crime in any given nation (Neal 81; Wandall 26). Additionally, the installation of security systems can be used as measure of determining the prevalence of the crime in a given neighborhood. One can therefore conclude that the number of burglary as well as rape cases in a region present an important indicator of the state of the social health in a community.
Rape and burglary are among the various crimes in a society and their differences outweigh their similarities. Some of the differences include the inclusion of age, the inability to measure the exact impact of the offense as well as the influence of history and culture when analyzing cases of rape, which is not the case with burglary. The similarity is that they are both indicators of the social well-being of a community.
Works Cited
Barlow, Harold., & Decker, Steven. Criminology and Public Policy: Putting Theory to Work.
Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2010. Print.
Neal, Danielle Lively. Social Capital and Urban Crime. Elpaso, TX: LFB Scholarly Publishing
LLC, 2011. Print.
Schiffman, Jessica, and Edwards, Margie. Gender Violence: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. New
York, NY: New York University Press, 2007. Print
Wandall, Rasmus. Decisions to Imprison. Abingdon, OXON: Ashgate Publishing Group, 2008.
