View article

Responsibility for arrest and charging makes police influential agents in the offical processing of sexual-assault cases. Recent research offers three competing models of police decisions: the legal model suggests that police do not discriminate between victims on the basis of extralegal attributes; the extralegal model suggests that police do discriminate; and the change model suggests that reliance on extralegal determinants declines with growing awareness of rape as a social problem. These models were tested on 905 sexual-assault complaints to police in a large, midwestern city over six years. The data showed that the most important determinants of arrest, charge seriousness and felony screening were legal. Suspects received more serious outcomes when: (1) the victim was able to identify a suspect, (2) the victim was willing to testify, (3) the incident included sexual penetration, (4) charges were more …