Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Abandoned rape kits identify over 800 serial rapists in one Michigan county

freep.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 219 posts

Re: Abandoned rape kits identify over 800 serial rapists in one Michigan county

#71

Post by gph »

sigstoat wrote: post #42
DoreenMichele wrote: post #30

My recollection is that it is partly money. They have to make judgement calls on where to spend the money, and someone who has worked as a prostitute is less likely to be a case you can successfully convict, so it gets cut. (Which is then self fulfilling prophecy because without the DNA evidence, it is less likely to get a conviction.) Mariska Hargitay of SVU fame is behind this stuff. I couldn't readily find the blu…

> I couldn't readily find the blurb I was looking for, but found an interview that says there are 175k unprocessed rape kits in the US. not to dismiss that entire number (or even much of it), but it's worth noting that many locales will collect anonymous rape kits. but a rape kit without any kind of identifying information on it is of no evidentiary value (you can't establish chain of custody, and you don't have a vi…

What is the purpose of an anonymous rape kit? From your post it sounds like it doesn't really have a purpose to any criminal investigation, but if that's the case why are they even collecting it in the first place?

Re: Abandoned rape kits identify over 800 serial rapists in one Michigan county

#72

Post by Amorymeltzer »

kelukelugames wrote: post #2

>Over 800 serial rapists, criminals who have struck 10-15 times without being stopped, were identified. 127 convictions have been made this far. The definition of serial rapist is 10+ victims. That's a lot of them in one county. o_O

Not to diminish the magnitude of this, but those numbers appear to be an error on the part of boingboing. Thankfully the source has been updated, and says:

>One of the most astounding findings here is that you've identified 817 serial rapists. That's 817 people who attacked more than one person

>A rapist rapes on average seven to 11 times before they're caught. ... Of our set of 817 ... over 50 of them have 10 to 15 hits apiece.

Still horrifying.

Re: Abandoned rape kits identify over 800 serial rapists in one Michigan county

#73

Post by leephillips »

There was no (space for) discussion of methodology in the article. In reading about these cases one should keep in mind that a forensic DNA test does not uniquely identify an individual, and, if it's used to match for someone in a large database, you must beware the epidemiological fallacy. It's also possible that what appears to be a single "serial rapist" may be more than one criminal.

Re: Abandoned rape kits identify over 800 serial rapists in one Michigan county

#74

Post by ancap »

orf wrote: post #39

> You're not going to find too many blond-haired, blue eyed white women ... Because their kits are treated differently, their cases are solved. That's just the way it is in this country. If you're a person of color, if you're a different economic class, then your case across the board, across the board, not just sexual assault — they're treated differently. And that's just the truth. People may not want to admit it,…

This quote is nonsense. As another commenter noted, the 86% of victims being people of color roughly matches the demographics of the city. As Worthy herself notes there are hundreds of thousands untested rape-kits nationwide, affecting predominantly white areas as well. You can see more stats at http://www.endthebacklog.org/backlog/where-backlog-exists-an....

The fact that the backlog has grown so large in Detroit (in relation to other areas) is a consequence of the city being bankrupt. The period of time that the backlog ballooned happened when the city was run by black mayors (note: I'm not saying that as attribution). Also the police department is predominantly made up of blacks, roughly reflecting the demographics of the city. To portray this as a conspiracy against black women is absurd.

Re: Abandoned rape kits identify over 800 serial rapists in one Michigan county

#75

Post by sp332 »

jessaustin wrote: post #70
pavon wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not when 82% of the population are African American.

The point is that this is a city with a large majority of blacks, and it just so happens to have terrible police. That isn't a contingent circumstance.

Anyone with any money left as soon as possible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_Detroit#/media/File... Since Detroit has a storied history of racism, most of the poor people who have remained are black. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Detroit... The state of public services is bad because there is no money left, not because the place is full of black people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_Detroit#/media/File...

Re: Abandoned rape kits identify over 800 serial rapists in one Michigan county

#76

Post by rhizome »

danielvf wrote: post #27

The kits were from 1984 to 2009. It sounds like cases were being marked closed (usually incorrectly) before the kits were processed and the DNA added to the database. Thus, the kits were tossed into storage. For background, this is Detroit. Wayne County, in which this happened, is demographically more than 40% Black. From the article “86% of our victims in these untested kits are people of color.“ The city government…

Demographically, Detroit is currently over 80% black, perhaps only coincidentally similar to the proportion of untested rape kits. Perhaps.

However, Detroit was ~30% white in 1980, 3x what it is today, and untested rape kits surely fed a perception of intractable crime over the intervening years as white flight killed the city.

Re: Abandoned rape kits identify over 800 serial rapists in one Michigan county

#77

Post by blueline »

theptip wrote: post #66

> Ten thousand rape kits tested. One hundred twenty-seven convictions won, 1,947 cases investigated, 817 serial rapists identified. This is crazy. I wonder how much it costs to test a kit; this could be a very high-utility charitable donation. Looks like there is a charity that is pushing this issue (linked from the OP): http://endthebacklog.org [edited to add, looks like $8,893 per kit, from http://endthebacklog.org…

I think you're misinterpreting the content of that page.

the same source says $1000-$1500 per kit

http://www.endthebacklog.org/backlog/why-backlog-exists

I'm not exactly sure what the meaning of the $8000 savings statistic on the page you linked refers to.

Re: Abandoned rape kits identify over 800 serial rapists in one Michigan county

#78

Post by rhizome »

theptip wrote: post #66

> Ten thousand rape kits tested. One hundred twenty-seven convictions won, 1,947 cases investigated, 817 serial rapists identified. This is crazy. I wonder how much it costs to test a kit; this could be a very high-utility charitable donation. Looks like there is a charity that is pushing this issue (linked from the OP): http://endthebacklog.org [edited to add, looks like $8,893 per kit, from http://endthebacklog.org…

I think you misunderstood the $8893, which is how much was saved by testing the kits in Cleveland.

Re: Abandoned rape kits identify over 800 serial rapists in one Michigan county

#79

Post by turc1656 »

I think the most disturbing thing about this is that there are even 800 serial rapists in one single county, even if it's over a 30-35 year period. That's around 25 serial rapists a year in that one county, which is kind of extraordinary when you think about it. Serial rapists are supposedly incredibly rare. They say that in nearly every case it's someone that the victim knows. This makes me think twice about that. And these are just the ones they identified! And in just one county! I have a young daughter and information like this kind of terrifies me.

Re: Abandoned rape kits identify over 800 serial rapists in one Michigan county

#80

Post by fgjjgutjvnu »

quirkot wrote: post #3

My god, how do you leave over 11k crimes just sitting in a store room... in one county. I'm glad they're addressing this gross miscarriage of justice. Hope it's an isolated thing (but not actually expecting it to be so)

Not every unused rape kit implies that the case wasn't solved. You can solve rape cases without rape kits.
Post reply on HN