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

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

#81

Post by Jun8 »

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 is a good case of how two important ideas are being conflated to the detriment of the larger lesson to be learned, I think. As far as I can tell, Prosecutor Worthy is making two arguments: (1) Black (assume PoC approx. equals black in this context) rape victims are treated differently than white ones. She bases this on the fact that 86% of unsolved victim cases are from black people (compared to ~40% of the population being black, I don't have the exact figure, took this from danielvf's comment above). (2) That economic class also plays a role in the discrepancy, although this point seems to be less important to her.

The "not going to find too many blond-haired, blue eyed white women" comment is unfortunate, not only because this uses a stereotype but also because it seems she doesn't have the data for this.

The 40% vs 86% discrepancy is staggering, but it would be interesting to verify analytically how class plays a role. I would be extremely surprised if a wealthy black person's rape kit were treated differently than a similar white person in this county. And compare that with other poor, mostly white counties across the nation.

They key, I think, here is class, rather than race. NOT that race is not important, but that can't be the 99% of teh story, as implied here. Cornel West makes this point more bluntly in his recent criticism of Ta-Nehisi Coates (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/dec/17/ta-neh...).

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

#84

Post by excalibur »

turc1656 wrote: post #79

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. A…

It's not any old county. Wayne County is the most populous county in the state. It includes the city of Detroit and much of the surrounding metro area.

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

#85

Post by dragonwriter »

ancap wrote: post #74
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 (…

> As another commenter noted, the 86% of victims being people of color roughly matches the demographics of the city.

Not at the time the kits were collected, it doesn't.

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

#86

Post by [deleted] »

turc1656 wrote: post #79

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. A…

[deleted]

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

#87

Post by turc1656 »

excalibur wrote: post #84
turc1656 wrote: post #79

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. A…

It's not any old county. Wayne County is the most populous county in the state. It includes the city of Detroit and much of the surrounding metro area.

I was aware of that when making the comment. I still find it surprising, though. The statistics are just much higher than I expected, even for Detroit.

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

#88

Post by Brockenstein »

rhizome wrote: post #76
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.

Wayne County != Detroit, Detroit might be 80% black, but Wayne County according to what I've read is 40.5% black.

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

#89

Post by hux_ »

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,…

It's not about people trying to hide anything. Or about one particular country. You can't shame or guilt trip people into doing the right thing. It never works. You can either pay them or reprogramming their minds. And both those routes are hard and takes generations of sustained work.

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

#90

Post by nemild »

Jun8 wrote: post #81
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 is a good case of how two important ideas are being conflated to the detriment of the larger lesson to be learned, I think. As far as I can tell, Prosecutor Worthy is making two arguments: (1) Black (assume PoC approx. equals black in this context) rape victims are treated differently than white ones. She bases this on the fact that 86% of unsolved victim cases are from black people (compared to ~40% of the popu…

I agree that this is a worthy area of inquiry. If you're interested in data, I highly encourage this type of research - and the data is probably out there to do this.

I do data analysis on news coverage, and there's data to show that we have a predilection to hear about the West (even compared to other geographically close regions):

https://www.nemil.com/s/part2-terrorism.html

As you point out, hard to determine how much of this predilection is due to economic similarity or geography versus cultural/racial/religious.

Beyond that, my gut is that we can actually derive empathy scores across countries or races based on data like this.

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