ORI GI NAL ARTI CLE

Misogyny: Its Still the LawAn Empirical Assessment

of the Missouri Juvenile Court Systems Processing
of Rape and Robbery Offenders
M. Dyan McGuire

Steve Donner

Elizabeth Callahan
Published online: 21 August 2012
Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012
Abstract Patriarchal societies have long used their legal systems as a vehicle of
oppression. This article examines the extent to which bias against women can still be
discerned in the content of the criminal law by comparing and contrasting Missouris
forcible rape and robbery in the rst degree statutes. The study then analyzes the
application of these statutes by examining all of the forcible rape and robbery in the rst
degree cases processed by Missouris juvenile court system between January 1, 2001
and December 31, 2004 (N = 617). The results of these analyses suggest that Mis-
souris robbery statute is more protective of victims than is its rape statute. They also
indicate that at least among juveniles, robbery offenders are sanctioned more severely
than rape offenders in terms of detention, informal adjustment and adjudication.
Keywords Gender Rape Robbery Courts Criminal law
Introduction
Patriarchal societies are characterized by social arrangements that empower and
advantage men at the expense of women, who are oppressed and exploited [34]. One
tool at societys disposal for establishing and enforcing specic social arrangements
is law, which can be used to forcefully coerce compliance through nes, corporal
M. D. McGuire (&)
Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice, Saint Louis University, McGannon Hall 249, 3750
Lindell Blvd., St. Louis, MO 63108-3342, USA
e-mail: mcguired@slu.edu
S. Donner E. Callahan
Saint Louis University, St. Louis, MO, USA
Present Address:
E. Callahan
Missouri Attorney Generals Ofce, Jefferson City, MO, USA
1 3
Gend. Issues (2012) 29:124
DOI 10.1007/s12147-012-9109-8
punishment and imprisonment. Patriarchal societies have long used their legal
systems to subjugate and control women in a variety of ways including prohibiting
them from owning property or other economic assets, denying them access to
education and restricting their participation in the political system [34].
While some of the more egregious forms of legal oppression of women have been
abandoned, there is still reason to believe that there remains in our lawand legal system
a bias against women that manifests itself in both the content and application of the law.
This study will examine the existence of this ongoing bias by examining the content of
Missouris forcible rape and robbery in the rst degree statutes and by examining the
consequences applied to juveniles accused of these offenses. Specically, this study
examines whether Missouris robbery in the rst degree statute is more protective on its
face of robbery victims than Missouris forcible rape statute is of rape victims and
whether juveniles charged with robbery in the rst degree are sanctioned more severely
by the juvenile court than those charged with forcible rape.
Forcible rape and robbery in the rst degree were selected for comparison
because they are somewhat analogous yet are strongly gendered in terms of
perpetrators and victims. They are somewhat analogous in that both offenses are
regarded as serious felonies in every jurisdiction in the United States but neither
involves the loss of life. Indeed, in Missouri, as well as many other jurisdictions a
conviction for either offense can mean life imprisonment. In addition, both offenses
are forcible in nature under Missouri law. Robbery in the rst degree involves
forcibly stealing anothers property while forcible rape involves forcibly having sex
with another person. Rape, however, is almost exclusively perpetrated by men
against women while robbery tends to be committed by men against men [45, 50,
51]. As a result, it may be possible to discern gender effects when the content and
application of these statutes are examined.
Literature Review: Black Letter Law
The Anglo-American legal system is rife with examples of laws that explicitly serve
the economic interests of men at the expense of women and overtly enforce female
subordination. For example, until the passage of Married Womens Property Acts in
the latter half of the nineteenth century, husbands routinely had legal control of their
wives pre-marital assets [30]. During the era of fault divorce, most jurisdictions
required a woman to follow her husband wherever he chose to go. Failure to
maintain her domicile with her husband constituted abandonment and rendered the
wife at fault for the divorce, which resulted in the loss of alimony and marital
property [9]. Men had no duty to follow their wives and their failure to accompany
their wives if they moved did not constitute marital fault. In fact, the wifes move in
the face of her husbands refusal to accompany her rendered her at fault for a
divorce regardless of the reason for the move. No-fault divorce is now the law of the
land so such laws are no longer in effect [43].
The criminal law, too, has protected males at the expense of females. For example,
as late as the nineteenth century, courts in this country still condoned the beating of
wives by husbands [see, e.g., State v. Black, 60 N.C. 266 (1864)]. But, perhaps the most
obvious example of codied misogyny can be found in rape laws. Rape laws began as a
2 Gend. Issues (2012) 29:124
1 3
means of protectingmens property interest in their womens sexual capacities from
other men [11, 35]. Specically, fathers rights in maintaining valuable marriageable
daughters who could be used to cement alliances and husbands rights to exclusive
sexual access to their wives to ensure paternity [11, 35].
Even after rape was recognized as a crime of violence against women and
womens rights to their own bodily integrity were acknowledged, the legal system
remained primarily concerned with protecting men from false accusations not
women from sexual violence [11]. Efforts to protect accused males at the expense of
victimized women included the prompt complaint requirement, the corroboration
rule, utmost resistance requirement and cautionary jury instructions calling for
heightened scrutiny of a rape victims testimony [2, 21].
The Model Penal Codes so-called prompt complaint rule provides that
prosecution for sex offenses like rape should be barred unless the victim les a
complaint within 3 months [20]. Prosecutors ofces frequently adopt de facto
policies requiring even prompter complaint or else they will decline to le charges.
There is no similar effort to truncate the statute of limitations to only 3 months or
even less for other crimes like robbery or non-sexual assault [2].
In addition, many jurisdictions adopted the corroboration rule which meant that a
female rape victims testimony alone was insufcient to convict a man of rape and
the state was obliged to produce physical evidence or the testimony of someone else
to bolster the victims account otherwise the man was legally entitled to an
acquittal. With all other types of violent crime, the victims uncorroborated
testimony is, and always was, sufcient [2]. While most jurisdictions have
abandoned the corroboration rule in recent times, it is still contained in the Model
Penal Code
1
and is still followed in a few jurisdictions [2, 20].
Historically, rape victims needed to prove that they resisted to their utmost in
order to establish their non-consent to being raped. As a result, defense attorneys
could shift the focus of the trial away from the defendants use of force and onto the
victims failure to use more or different types of physical resistance that might,
theoretically, have thwarted the assault. For example, an adult man who attacked a
teenage virgin in a eld, threw her to the ground and covered her mouth before
sexually penetrating her was not considered a rapist because the court concluded
that she should have used her limbs and pelvic muscles to greater advantage in
attempting to repel the rape and her failure to do so rendered the defendants rape
legal [21; Brown v. State, 127 Wis. 193, 106 N.W. 536 (1906)].
The requirement that female victims resist to their utmost was a result of the
courts special construction of consent in the rape context. Most courts behaved as
though consent to sexual activity was presumed unless specic and compelling
evidence to the contrary could be produced [21]. It was not enough for the State to
show that the woman did not give an indication of consent or even that she
expressly said she did not want to engage in sex [21]. More extreme evidence of
non-consent by female rape victims was required [21]. By contrast, in robbery cases,
1
The American Law Institute developed a Model Penal Code which was published for the rst time in
1962 and is periodically updated. The Model Penal Code purports to serve as a model for standardizing
criminal law across the fty states.
Gend. Issues (2012) 29:124 3
1 3
claims that the victim cooperated with the taking of the money or eased the way,
and thus consented, have generally been unsuccessful. Only where the owner of the
property actively participates in planning and committing the theft will consent be
found. Mere passive submission or passive assent does not amount to
consentexcept in the law of rape [21, p. 1126 and citations therein].
While victims are no longer held to the utmost resistance requirement, victims
are still required to offer reasonable physical resistance [21]. Requiring physical
resistance to establish non-consent essentially requires rape victims to risk injury to
themselves even in cases where there is no doubt as to the mans intent or
blameworthiness [21]. Victims of other crimes are not similarly required to show
that they physically resisted being victimized. For example, robbery victims are not
required to show they physically resisted the taking of their property in order for a
forcible stealing to constitute robbery.
In addition to heightened evidentiary standards designed to protect men, most
jurisdictions further stacked the deck in the perpetrators favor by requiring that
juries be instructed to give heightened scrutiny to the testimony of rape victims [2,
11, 35]. While most jurisdictions no longer instruct juries to treat rape victims
testimony with more skepticism than the testimony of victims of other types of
crimes, the Model Penal Code still calls for a cautionary instruction in rape cases
and eight states still require a cautionary instruction if there is no corroboration [2].
Until the advent of rape shield laws in the 1970s, defense attorneys were
permitted to interrogate the victim about her sexual past and often succeeded in
moving the focus of the trial from the defendants violent act to the victims failure
to remain pure and chaste. Women who refused to keep their sexual behavior within
male-dictated constraints were apparently not regarded as worthy of protection by
the rape statutes, a situation not dissimilar to earlier times when a mans property
interest in his womans sexuality was only worth protecting if the woman in
question was chaste [35]. Interestingly, most rape shield laws are riddled with
exceptions that still permit defense attorneys to make the victims sexual behavior
an issue. Missouris statute, for example, provides that:
evidence of specic instances of the complaining witness prior sexual
conduct or the absence of such instances or conduct is inadmissible, except
where such specic instances are:
(1) Evidence of the sexual conduct of the complaining witness with the defendant
to prove consent where consent is a defense to the alleged crime and the
evidence is reasonably contemporaneous with the date of the alleged crime; or
(2) Evidence of specic instances of sexual activity showing alternative source or
origin of semen, pregnancy or disease;
(3) Evidence of immediate surrounding circumstances of the alleged crime; or
(4) Evidence relating to the previous chastity of the complaining witness in cases,
where, by statute, previously chaste character is required to be proved by the
prosecution. 491.015 R.S.Mo.
Legal provisions assuring that the jury will be informed if the victim had
consensual sex with her rapist on another occasion may have their origin in the
4 Gend. Issues (2012) 29:124
1 3
notion that males have some right to sexual access with their women and thus
some force in such situations is understandable or acceptable. Provisions
allowing evidence of consensual sex with other men to be admitted to establish an
alternative source of semen or pregnancy or if they occurred around the same time
as the rape may be based on lingering concern that unchaste women are not really
rapable and that forcibly having sex with a woman like that is not really a crime.
Certainly today, with the availability of DNA testing, it does not seem necessary to
allow in evidence of sex with other men to establish the origin of semen or paternity.
The desire not to allow rape prosecutions to trammel on male prerogatives is
perhaps nowhere more apparent than in the marital rape bar, which remained the
law of the land until quite recently [16]. The marital rape bar was a legal provision
contained in rape statutes that precluded husbands from being prosecuted for raping
wives. In Missouri, husbands retained an unfettered right to rape, sodomize and
sexually abuse their wives until 1991 [41].
Findings: Black Letter Law
In turning to the texts of the statutes at issue here, one nds that Missouris forcible
rape statute prohibits a person fromhaving sexual intercourse with another person by
the use of forcible compulsion ( 566.030 R.S.Mo.). Forcible compulsion is dened
elsewhere in the code as physical force that overcomes reasonable resistance or a
threat, express or implied, that places a person in reasonable fear of death, serious
physical injury or kidnapping of such person or another person ( 556.061(12)). In
1998, the Missouri General Assembly amended the forcible rape statute to broaden the
forcible compulsion element to include instances where the rape is accomplished
through the use of the date rape drug. Thus, forcible compulsion nowincludes the
use of a substance administered without a victims knowledge or consent which
renders the victim physically or mentally impaired so as to be incapable of making an
informed consent to sexual intercourse ( 566.030 R.S.Mo.). This provision is fairly
narrowly tailored to cover only the secret administration of substances like rohypnol,
gamma hydroxyl butyrate and ketamine hydrochloride. Purposefully mixing strong
drinks for a woman who realizes she is drinking alcohol would not qualify as forcible
compulsion even if the person was deliberately attempting to incapacitate the female
so he could have sex with her without her consent.
The minimum penalty for forcible rape is normally 5 years in prison ( 566.030
R.S.Mo.). If, however, the State establishes that during the course of the rape the
defendant inicted serious physical injury on the victim, displayed a deadly weapon
or dangerous instrument in a threatening manner or subjected the victim to sexual
intercourse or deviate sexual intercourse with more than one person, the minimum
sentence is increased to 10 years ( 566.030 R.S.Mo.). These penalty provisions
indicate that the physical intrusion inherent in forcible rape is not sufcient to
establish the requisite serious physical injury and an additional showing of injury
beyond that which normally results from forcible sexual intercourse must be made.
Missouris robbery in the rst degree statute is codied at 569.020 R.S.Mo. and
provides that:
Gend. Issues (2012) 29:124 5
1 3
A person commits the crime of robbery in the rst degree when he forcibly
steals property and in the course thereof he, or another participant in the crime,
(1) Causes serious physical injury to any person; or
(2) Is armed with a deadly weapon; or
(3) Uses or threatens the immediate use of a dangerous instrument against any
person; or
(4) Displays or threatens the use of what appears to be a deadly weapon or
dangerous instrument.
Robbery in the rst degree is designated a class A felony ( 569.020 R.S.Mo.).
Under Missouri law, individuals convicted of class A felonies must receive a term
of imprisonment between 10 years and life ( 558.011 R.S.Mo.).
Discussion: The Black Letter Law
In examining the texts of the forcible rape (hereinafter referred to as rape) and
robbery in the rst degree (hereinafter referred to as robbery) statutes, the thing that
is most striking is that the minimum sentence under the robbery statute is higher
than the minimum sentence under the rape statute. The relative minimum sentences
suggest that in the Missouri General Assemblys judgment, it is somehow worse to
forcibly steal a persons property than it is to forcibly rape someone. A person
convicted of robbery automatically receives a minimum sentence of at least
10 years. A person convicted of rape is subject to a minimum sentence that is only
half as long (5 years) unless the state can prove one of the additional aggravating
circumstances identied in the penalty enhancement provision of the rape statute.
While many of the aggravating circumstances contained in the rape statute
such as inicting serious injury and displaying a deadly weapon or dangerous
instrument are similar to the elements identied in the rst degree robbery statute,
there are some subtle, yet important distinctions. For example, for robbery a
perpetrator must only be armed with a deadly weapon. She need not threaten the
victim with it. With rape, by contrast, the perpetrator must not only possess the
deadly weapon but he must actually display it in a threatening manner in order to
necessitate a minimum sentence of 10 years.
Missouris rape statute not only demands a stronger showing with regard to deadly
weapons but the mere fact that the legislature would think it necessary to require injury
or force beyond the forcible compulsion requirement already contained in the rape
statute indicates a fundamental lack of understanding of the realities of a typical rape
case. Most men are bigger and physically stronger than most women. This differential
in size and strength means that most men are able to seriously injure most women by
punching, kicking or strangling them. In a very real sense, male rapists are readily
capable of causing death or other serious physical injury to their female victims simply
by virtue of their superior size and physical strength.
Under Missouri law, a dangerous instrument means any instrument, article or
substance, which, under the circumstances in which it is used, is readily capable of
6 Gend. Issues (2012) 29:124
1 3
causing death or other serious physical injury ( 556.061 R.S.Mo.). Physically
larger and stronger males who forcibly compel women to have sex with them are
employing a dangerous instrument against their female victims even if they are not
also armed with additional weaponry. Despite the fact that male rapists are normally
readily capable of causing death or other serious physical injury to their female
victims with their bare hands, they are not automatically regarded as using a
dangerous instrument against their victims and need only serve a minimum of
5 years in prison, unless the State can prove the rapist used additional weaponry,
seriously injured the victim or participated in a gang rape.
The disparity between minimum sentences for rape and robbery are even more
bizarre when one considers that protection from bodily harm is generally regarded
as more important than the protection of material possessions in our legal system.
For example, every state recognizes the right of citizens to use lethal force against
an assailant who threatens serious physical harm but prohibits the use of lethal force
to protect only possessions. Thus, a person may not set up a spring gun to protect her
possessions while she is away from home but she may shoot an intruder who
threatens her physical well-being. Given that rape, by denition, involves a forcible
physical intrusion and robbery can often be accomplished without any actual
physical contact at all, one would expect rape not robbery to be treated as the more
serious offense. Yet, at least in Missouri, rape, by statute, appears to be treated as
the lesser crime.
Other differences in the statutes also suggest that the Missouri General Assembly
was concerned about protecting robbery victims from a wider range of forcible
contingencies than rape victims. For example, if a man displays a realistic looking
rubber knife and demands a womans purse, he is clearly guilty of robbery in the rst
degree and subject to a minimum 10 year sentence upon conviction. If that same man
uses the same rubber knife to coerce the same woman into submitting to sexual
intercourse, he may not be convicted at all because the rape statute, unlike the robbery
statute, does not explicitly indicate that the use of a realistic looking fake weapon is
sufcient to meet the forcible requirement of the statute. Even if the jury nds that the
knife placed her in reasonable fear of death or serious injury thus establishing the
forcible compulsion element of rape, the rapist is still only subject to a minimum
5 year sentence upon conviction. With the robbery case, by contrast, the State would
only need to convince the jury that the knife appeared to be a deadly weapon or a
dangerous instrument in order to establish the forcible element of robbery. It is very
hard to imagine that our hypothetical woman would have suffered more from having
her purse taken than she would have from being forced to have sex.
The courts have also been quick to construe force more narrowly in the rape
context than they do in other contexts. For example, if Bob knows that Tom owns a
gun, has a reputation for violence or has been violent toward Bob or other people in
the past, those facts can be used to establish Bobs reasonable fear of violence from
Tom and can be used to justify Bobs use of force, even lethal force, against Tom in
self-defense [21]; see also, State v Waller, 816 S.W.2d 212 (Mo. 1991). But, in rape
cases, courts frequently nd that prior threats and acts of violence by the defendant,
even when directed against the victim herself, are not sufcient to establish forcible
compulsion in the rape context [21 and cases cited therein].
Gend. Issues (2012) 29:124 7
1 3
Perhaps the relatively favorable treatment under the law accorded those who
commit rape as opposed to robbery is a reection of an implicit assumption on the
part of the legislature that forcibly taking another mans property is always wrong
but a certain amount of forcible behavior aimed at acquiring sexual access is
normal for males and should only be punished when its forcible character is
extreme. While the corroboration rule and other relics from our legal systems more
overtly misogynistic days are gone, in comparing Missouris modern rape and
robbery statutes one gets the distinct impression that the legislature is concerned
with narrowly circumscribing what constitutes rape, especially the aggravated
form that results in at least 10 years imprisonment. Less hesitancy is apparent on the
face of the robbery statute which appears to seek to be inclusive of forcible conduct
resulting in the theft or attempted theft of property and always punishes perpetrators
with at least 10 years in prison. Perhaps Lee Madigan and Nancy Gamble are right:
the real purpose of rape laws is to protect men from false accusations (1991).
Literature Review: Application of Rape Laws
Not only is there evidence of gender bias in the content of the law, there is also
evidence of bias in the way the law is applied to women through the criminal justice
system. Police, prosecutors and judges interviewed by Madigan and Gamble freely
admitted that rape victims were questioned about their clothing, alcohol use and
their reason for being in the place where they were assaulted (1991). Rape victims
stories were given particularly rigorous scrutiny and any inconsistencies, omissions,
improprieties on the victims part or failure to quickly, clearly and cogently
present a compelling and consistent story of rape tended to result in the case being
dropped, dismissed or pled down [35]. There is no evidence that robbery victims
routinely have to overcome such screening by the police or prosecutors. Police
may also put more effort into catching robbers as recent research indicates that the
police are more likely to clear robberies than rapes [49].
Even worse, women sometimes have to deal with police who do not even want to
recognize what happened to them. The case of Susan Estrich, a rape survivor and
law professor, is instructive. In retelling her own rape victimization, Estrich reports
that the police asked me if he took any money. He did; but while I remember
virtually every detail of that day and night, I cant remember how much. But I
remember their answer. He did take money; that made it an armed robbery. Much
better than a rape. They got right on the radio with that [21, p. 1087].
Even in the courtroom victims are not always accorded fair treatment. While
most jurisdictions have some form of rape shield laws on the books, they are not
always enforced because ultimately their enforcement depends on individual judges
preventing defense attorneys from asking impermissible questions. Unfortunately,
judges are not always diligent is carrying out this duty. The Missouri Task force on
Gender Bias, for example, found that enforcement of rape shield laws was uneven
and that even provisions that made it onto the books were not always enforced [41].
Since there is little appellate oversight of erroneous trial court rulings that adversely
affect the prosecution, as a failure to uphold the rape shield law during the victims
8 Gend. Issues (2012) 29:124
1 3
cross-examination does, this problem is difcult to police and may well be on-
going.
There is reason to believe such anecdotal accounts of ill treatment of female rape
victims at the hands of male criminal justice system personnel may well typify the
experience of most female rape victims. Spears and Spohn [48] found evidence that
Detroit prosecutors routinely screened out cases involving sexual assault victims
who behaved improperly or were of questionable character regardless of the
strength of the evidence or the seriousness of the offense.
Victim blaming in rape cases is common [5]. Police and other decision-makers
who deal with rape victims and their cases are overwhelmingly male [26]. An
extensive body of research indicates that males are more inclined to blame female
victims of sexual assault and excuse male perpetrators (see e.g., [42]). Given this
research and the fact that most decision-makers in the criminal justice system are
male, it would not be surprising to nd that victims are treated unsympathetically
and perpetrators are treated leniently. Women of color are even less likely to have
their rapes treated as serious crimes by the criminal justice system [17, 28].
Most of the rapes which occur in our society are perpetrated by people known to the
victim, often the victims spouse or boyfriend [3, 36]. Most, but not all, of the literature
indicates that sex crimes perpetrated by individuals known to the victimare not treated
as harshly by the system as sex offenses committed by strangers [12, 23, 36]. In fact,
such incidents are often not even regarded as criminal offenses at all [46]. Even where
such offenses are recognized as crimes, they are rarely, if ever, charged as forcible
rape. This is especially true if the victimis or was married to her rapist. Wife-rapers are
a category of rapist that receives notoriously lenient treatment [6, 46].
By contrast, this study is limited to cases which were characterized by the
authorities as forcible rapes. Thus, there is little reason to believe that any of the
cases being examined here involved perpetrators known to their victims and even
less reason to think the juvenile perpetrators were married to their victims.
Consequently, the literature would predict that the rapists under study here would be
likely to receive harsher treatment then that usually meted out to the typical rapist.
Description of the Data
The data used to evaluate the application of Missouris forcible rape and robbery in
the rst degree statutes were collected by the Missouri Division of Youth Services
(DYS). DYS released the data to the author for analysis by request. These data
are routinely collected by every circuit court and are compiled for research and
evaluation purposes as part of the Missouri Statewide Juvenile Information System.
2
While these data are comprehensive, they are not particularly rich. Concerns
about condentiality meant that DYS would only release a limited amount of
information about each referral. The released data include information about
primary referral offense, sex, race, age, prior record, concurrent delinquency, prior
2
Attempts to obtain analogous adult data were unsuccessful and the authors wish to acknowledge their
gratitude to DYS for providing us with data.
Gend. Issues (2012) 29:124 9
1 3
history of abuse and neglect and whether alcohol or drugs were known to be
involved. Various outcome measures reecting judicial processing decisions
including data regarding detention, certication, informal adjustment and adjudi-
cation were also provided.
The independent variable of primary interest for purposes of this research was the
primary offense variable. Primary offense measures the offense for which the
juvenile was referred to the juvenile court system. It is the most serious offense
associated with the incident that gave rise to the childs referral but is not
necessarily the only offense with which the child was charged. In this study, all
cases involve a primary offense of either rape under 566.030 R.S.Mo. or robbery
under 569.020 R.S.Mo. About a quarter of cases (N = 149) involved rape and
about three quarters involved robbery (N = 468). Rape cases are coded with a 1 and
robbery cases are coded with a 0. In order to secure enough cases for analysis, data
from several years had to be obtained. The study sample is comprised of all cases
referred to the Missouri Juvenile Courts for either rape or robbery between January
1, 2001 and December 31, 2004. There are 193 cases from 2001, 141 from 2002,
153 from 2003, and 130 from 2004 for a total of 617 cases.
Demographic variables include race, age and sex. Race was coded by the State as
follows: 1 for White, 2 for Black, 3 for Hispanic, 4 for American Indian, 5 for
Oriental and 8 for Other. There were 162 cases involving White children, 419
involving Black Children, 26 involving Hispanic children, 8 cases involving
children of other races and two cases were missing or coded with an invalid number.
The data were recoded with 0 for White children. Black, Hispanic and Other were
collapsed into one category labeled minority and recoded with 1. The remaining
cases were coded system missing. Exactly half of the cases involving White
juveniles were rape cases and the other half were robbery cases (N = 81). The split
was notably different with minority juveniles. About 85 % (N = 387) of the cases
involving minority children were referred to the juvenile court for robbery while
less than 15 % (N = 67) of the cases were referred for rape.
Age was calculated by my research assistant by comparing the date of birth with
the date of referral and creating a ratio variable reecting how old the child was in
years when s/he was referred to the Juvenile Court. The range on age varies from 10
to 17 with about 2/3 of the cases involving children who are 15 or 16 years old
(N = 413). All but 10 of the cases involved children who were at least 13 years old.
Sex is a dichotomous variable coded 0 for male and 1 for female. Twenty-three of
the cases involved female perpetrators while the remaining 594 cases involved male
perpetrators. Only 4 cases involved a female charged with rape
3
and 19 cases
involved a female charged with robbery.
3
While it is possible that these 4 cases involved a female perpetrator and a male victim, it is also quite
likely that these females were charged with rape as a result of assisting a male in raping another female.
Like most jurisdictions, principals of any degree and accessories before the fact are equally liable under
Missouri law which provides that a person is criminally responsible for the conduct of another when
either before or during the commission of an offense with the purpose of promoting the commission of an
offense, he aids or agrees to aid or attempts to aid such other person in planning, committing or
attempting to commit the offense. See 562.041 R.S.Mo. Also like many other jurisdictions, statutory
references to the male gender apply to females as well.
10 Gend. Issues (2012) 29:124
1 3
Unfortunately, DYS does not capture any data about victims. Nevertheless,
credible inferences can be made. Under Missouri law, forcible rape is limited to
sexual intercourse, which is dened as any penetration, however slight, of the
female sex organ by the male sex organ, whether or not an emission results (see,
566.010 and 566.030). Same-sex forcible sexual assaults are prosecuted under the
forcible sodomy statute (see, 566.060 R.S.Mo.). Thus, if all but 4 of the
individuals charged with forcible rape in this sample were males, all but 4 of their
victims were females. With regard to the robbery cases, there is no solid basis for
inferring the sex of the victim in any particular case. However, 2002 data from the
Bureau of Justice statistics suggest that males were almost twice as likely as females
to be victimized by a robber [45]. Thus, it is reasonable to assume that many of the
victims of the robbery perpetrators in this sample were male.
Unfortunately, the Missouri Statewide Juvenile Information System collects data
only about the quantity of a childs prior delinquent offense(s) but nothing about the
quality, character or nature of those offense(s). The data were used as recorded by
the State and constitute a ratio variable indicating the number of prior delinquent
offenses for which the child has been referred to the Juvenile Court. The range for
prior delinquency was 063, although the cases clustered on the low end of the scale
with a mean of 4.24 and a standard deviation of 8.24. Two hundred and forty-eight
cases involved a child with no prior delinquencies, 56 cases involved a child with
one prior delinquency, 68 cases involved a child with two prior delinquencies, 40
cases involved a child with three prior delinquencies, 40 cases involved a child with
four prior delinquencies, 25 cases involved a child with ve prior delinquencies.
One hundred and thirty-nine cases involved a child with 6 or more prior
delinquencies. One case did not have prior delinquency data associated with it and
was coded as system missing.
Concurrent delinquency refers to the number of other delinquent acts that were
referred to the juvenile court at the same time as the primary offense. These offenses
were less serious than the primary offense but would nonetheless have constituted
criminal conduct if they had been committed by an adult (i.e. status offenses were
not included). As with prior delinquency, the State does not keep data concerning
the nature or quality of concurrent delinquencies. Rather, it simply records the
number of other delinquent offenses, other than the primary offense, associated with
each case. The range for concurrent delinquency is between 0 and 14. Once again,
the cases clustered on the low end of the scale with a mean of 2.01 and a standard
deviation of 1.56. Only 5 cases had no concurrent delinquency, 312 cases had one,
141 cases had two, 76 cases had three and 45 cases had four. Thirty-seven cases had
5 or more concurrent delinquencies associated with the referral. One case did not
have concurrent delinquency data associated with it and was coded as system
missing.
Prior history of abuse and neglect is recorded by the State in the same way as
prior and concurrent delinquency. The State records the number of referrals for
abuse and neglect but does not record any information about the nature or quality of
the abuse or neglect suffered by the child. Most of the children referred for rape and
robbery did not have prior referrals for abuse or neglect (N = 518). Fifty-ve cases
Gend. Issues (2012) 29:124 11
1 3
had 1 prior abuse or neglect report associated with the referred child, 24 cases had
two, 11 cases had three, 3 cases had four and 5 cases had ve prior referrals.
The State collects data on whether the child was under the inuence of drugs or
alcohol at the time the crime was committed. Unfortunately, the State usually does
not know if the youth was under the inuence at the time of the crime (N = 480).
Because alcohol and drug use probably plays no role in judicially determined
outcomes unless it is known that the child was under the inuence, the No and
Unknown categories probably inuence outcomes similarly. Thus, the drug and
alcohol data were recoded as a dichotomous variable collapsing no and unknown
use into the same category and coding that with 0. All cases involving known drug
or alcohol use were collapsed into another category which was coded 1. This created
a variable with 24 cases indicating known intoxication of one kind or another with
the remaining 592 cases being coded with no or unknown use of intoxicants.
Outcome variables including detention, certication, informal adjustment and
adjudication were also examined. Detention is the decision to hold a child in
custody for some period pending resolution of the case. The vast majority of
Missouris detained children are held in secure detention facilities. In fact, only 4
cases in the present study involved only nonsecure detention. Since nonsecure
detention is very rare in Missouri and is far more likely to result from
determinations which have nothing to do with judgments regarding the severity
of the offense or the dangerousness of the child, the focus of this study is on secure
detention. Secure detention restricts the movements and activities of detainees and
mimics conditions found in adult jails. Secure detention is generally used to detain
juveniles who are believed to be dangerous or a ight risk (Mo. Sup. Ct. R. 111.07
& 111.08). In this study, cases involving juveniles who were securely detained for
some period of time prior to the resolution of their case are coded with a 1 to
indicate the juveniles were securely detained while cases involving juveniles who
were never securely detained are coded with a 0. Most of the cases in this sample
involved secure detention (N = 329).
Perhaps the harshest sanction that the Juvenile Court can dish out is certication,
a process whereby a juvenile is certied by the juvenile court as eligible to stand
trial in the adult court system. Certication in Missouri is governed by 211.071
R.S.Mo. and primarily turns upon a judicial determination of whether there are
reasonable prospects of rehabilitation within the juvenile justice system. Under
Missouri law, a certication hearing is mandatory in all cases involving an
allegation of rape or robbery and tend to occur at the beginning of the process (see,
211.071(1) R.S.Mo.).
Only 59 cases in this sample were certied, the other cases all remained with the
juvenile court. Cases were coded with 1 if they were certied and with a 0 if they
were not. Because certication ends the juvenile courts involvement in the case, no
further processing by the juvenile court is possible. Thus, all 59 certied cases were
removed from the sample prior to examining informal adjustment and adjudication
because the juvenile court would not have considered either of these juvenile court
resolutions in cases involving a child who had been certied.
Once certied cases were removed, the other end of the spectrum was examined.
The most lenient thing the juvenile court can do, short of dismissal, is to informally
12 Gend. Issues (2012) 29:124
1 3
adjust the case. Informal adjustments may involve restitution or community service
and are governed by 211.083 R.S.Mo. Not surprisingly, given the serious nature of
these charges, only 47 cases involved informal adjustment, the other 511 cases did
not.
Lastly, this study examined adjudication, specically whether the child was
adjudicated delinquent or not. Adjudication is the juvenile equivalent to an adult
conviction and represents a judicial determination that the child committed the
offense(s) for which s/he was referred to the juvenile court. Cases which did not
involve an adjudication of delinquency were coded with a 0 and those that did
involve an adjudication of delinquency were coded with a 1. Only 180 of the cases
in this sample involved a formal adjudication of delinquency, the remaining 378
cases did not.
Findings: Application of Rape and Robbery Laws to Juveniles in Missouri
Conducting cross tabular analysis using primary offense as the independent variable
and secure detention, certication, informal adjustment and adjudication as the
dependent variables indicates that rape and robbery defendants are treated
differently in terms of these various outcome measures (see Table 1). As is clear
from Table 1, there is a consistent and clear pattern of rape cases receiving more
lenient treatment than robbery cases among all outcome measures. For example,
children charged with robbery are more than twice as likely to be detained and are
more than three times as likely to be adjudicated delinquent than are those charged
with rape. Robbers are also appreciably less likely to get the soft sanction of
informal adjustment. By contrast, robbers were slightly more likely to get the hard
sanction of certication than were rapists, although results with regard to
certication are insignicant.
As a precursor to conducting logistic regression, a correlation matrix, using
Pearsons Correlation, was constructed (see Table 2). Signicant and preferably
strong correlations between the independent and dependent variables are essential
for establishing a basis for inferring a causal relationship. As can be discerned from
Table 2, the primary offense variable is signicantly related to secure detention,
informal adjustment and adjudication although the correlations are not particularly
strong. Primary offense is not signicantly correlated with certication.
Although it is important for the dependent and independent variables to be
related, it is equally important, for purposes of conducting multiple regression
analysis, that the independent and control variables not be so highly correlated with
one another as to engender multicollinearity problems [52, 4]. The matrix reveals no
bivariate correlations in excess of 0.70, which is the generally recognized point
beyond which collinearity becomes a signicant problem [52, 4].
Having established that multiple regression can reliably be employed with these
data, it is time to examine the regression results. Because all of the dependent
variables are dichotomous in nature, it was necessary to perform logistic regression
rather than OLS regression. With logistic regression, the log coefcients are not
Gend. Issues (2012) 29:124 13
1 3
directly comparable the way Beta coefcients are. Wald
4
statistics, however, can be
used to compare the relative weight of the various statistically signicant
contributors to determine their relative importance in predicting the dependent or
outcome variable. The larger the Wald statistic, the larger that variables relative
contribution to the dependent variable [4].
Looking at the model specied to predict secure detention rst indicates that
being charged with robbery, as opposed to rape, had the largest inuence on the
decision to securely detain a child (see Table 3). Being charged with additional acts
of delinquency besides rape or robbery and being known to have been under the
inuence of drugs and alcohol at the time of the offense make the next biggest
contributions to the decision to detain. Oddly enough, not having a record of prior
delinquency makes a statistically signicant contribution to receiving detention but
its Wald statistic indicates that its impact is weakest among the signicant variables.
The pseudo R
2
measures indicate that this model explains between 15 and 20 % of
the observed variance in detention.
The results for the regression analysis using certication as the dependent
variable indicates that older children are more likely to be certied as adults as are
those with concurrent and prior delinquencies (Table 4). The primary offense,
known use of an intoxicant, sex, race and prior abuse and neglect do not appear to
affect the certication decision in a statistically signicant manner. The pseudo R
2
measures indicate that this model explains between 7 and 14 % of the observed
variance in certication.
Because the juvenile court cannot both certify a juvenile as an adult and
informally adjust them or adjudicate them delinquent, cases that were certied were
Table 1 Cross tabulation of major allegation with outcome measures
Detention status Robbery Rape Informally adjusted Robbery Rape
Not detained N 181 107 Not adjusted 449 121
% 38.7 71.8 % 95.9 81.2
Detained N 287 42 Adjusted 19 28
% 61.3 28.2 % 4.1 18.8
Chi-square = 49.86** Chi-square = 34.86**
Certied as an adult Robbery Rape Adjudication Robbery Rape
Not certied N 419 139 Not adjudicated 303 134
% 89.5 93.3 % 64.7 89.9
Certied N 49 10 Adjudicated delinquent 165 15
% 10.5 6.7 % 35.3 10.1
Chi-square is not signicant Chi-square = 34.71**
* Signicant at the 0.05 level
** Signicant at the 0.001 level
4
A signicant Wald statistic permits one to reject the null hypothesis that the logistic regression
coefcient is equal to zero and thus establishes the statistical signicance of the relationship between the
independent and dependent variables [4, p. 579].
14 Gend. Issues (2012) 29:124
1 3
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Gend. Issues (2012) 29:124 15
1 3
removed from the sample (N = 59) before the data was examined in terms of
informal adjustment and adjudication. This left a sample of 558 cases. As previously
indicated, an informal adjustment is a soft resolution and results in imposition of
community service, restitution or other informal sanction. As is clear from Table 5,
primary offense was once again the largest contributor to the outcome, but here
being charged with rape as opposed to robbery predicted the soft outcome of
informal adjustment. Unlike the prior models, the demographic variables were
statistically signicant and indicate that being female and being minority
contributes to the result of being informally adjudicated. Having no record of prior
delinquency and being known to have been under the inuence of an intoxicant are
also positively correlated with the decision to informally adjudicate a case. The
remaining variables were insignicant. The pseudo R
2
measures indicate that this
model explains between 13 and 30 % of the observed variance.
Table 3 Factors inuencing imposition of secure detention
Variable in the equation Log. coeff. SE Wald
Sex (female = 1) -0.752 0.488 2.372
Race (minority = 1) 0.415 0.222 3.487
Age 0.080 0.076 1.113
Prior delinq. -0.033* 0.012 8.142
Concurrent delinq. 0.281** 0.072 15.123
Prior abuse/neglect 0.181 0.120 2.274
Drug/alcohol use 1.899** 0.584 10.563
Offense (rape = 1) -1.188** 0.231 26.505
Constant -1.596 1.200 1.768
Chi-square Cox and Snell R
2
Nagelkerke R
2
97.75** 0.149 0.199
Table 4 Factors inuencing the certication decision
Variable in the equation Log. coeff. SE Wald
Sex (female = 1) -18.705 7,922.855 0.000
Race (minority = 1) 0.071 0.395 0.032
Age 0.674** 0.176 14.612
Prior delinq. 0.029* 0.013 4.991
Concurrent delinq. 0.254** 0.075 11.582
Prior abuse/neglect -0.004 0.189 0.000
Drug/alcohol use -0.425 1.075 0.157
Offense (rape = 1) -0.330 0.432 0.586
Constant -13.543** 2.846 22.647
Chi-square Cox and Snell R
2
Nagelkerke R
2
40.93** 0.065 0.141
16 Gend. Issues (2012) 29:124
1 3
Finally, the adjudication model indicates that being charged with robbery as
opposed to rape is the largest contributor to the decision to formally adjudicate a
child as a delinquent (Table 6). Being charged with additional act(s) of delinquency
also correlates with being formally adjudicated delinquent and is the second largest
contributor. Being White, younger and being known to have been under the
inuence of alcohol or drugs also contribute to the adjudication decision in a
statistically signicant manner.
Discussion of Empirical Findings
In terms of good news, very few of the approximately 65,000 cases processed
annually by the Missouri Juvenile Court system during the study period
Table 5 Factors inuencing informal adjustment
Variable in the equation Log. coeff. SE Wald
Sex (female = 1) 1.220* 0.588 4.299
Race (minority = 1) -1.128* 0.382 8.731
Age -0.243 0.130 3.484
Prior delinq. -0.027 0.044 0.388
Concurrent delinq. -0.814* 0.316 6.653
Prior abuse/neglect -0.173 0.384 0.203
Drug/alcohol use 1.498* 0.548 7.477
Offense (rape = 1) 1.137* 0.383 8.829
Constant 2.452 2.023 1.469
Chi-square Cox and Snell R
2
Nagelkerke R
2
81.22** 0.125 0.302
Table 6 Factors inuencing the adjudication decision
Variable in the equation Log. coeff. SE Wald
Sex (female = 1) -0.755 0.551 1.881
Race (minority = 1) -0.537* 0.243 4.899
Age -0.202* 0.081 6.224
Prior delinq. 0.013 0.011 1.591
Concurrent delinq. 0.196** 0.061 10.459
Prior abuse/neglect 0.025 0.119 0.044
Drug/alcohol use 1.021* 0.459 4.941
Offense (rape = 1) -1.661** 0.317 27.514
Constant 2.438 1.273 3.669
Chi-square Cox and Snell R
2
Nagelkerke R
2
65.96** 0.103 0.147
Gend. Issues (2012) 29:124 17
1 3
(20012004) involved either rape or robbery. But, comparing the demographic
characteristics associated with referrals for these very serious offenses suggests
some disturbing information about the impact of race. In 2002, only 21.4 % of
Missouris juveniles were racial minorities [32]. However, almost 75 % of the cases
in this sample involved children belonging to a minority group. This is a very
dramatic disproportionate representation of minorities and may reect a tendency on
the part of the authorities to pull minority children into the juvenile justice system
under circumstances under which White children would not be formally processed.
Such selection bias working to the disadvantage of minorities has been found to
exist in the juvenile justice system by prior research (see e.g., [33]). Similarly,
over-enforcement against minority offenders in the adult system has also been
documented [49]. The nding that being White contributes to being formally
adjudicated further supports the selection bias/over-enforcement explanation
because if the comparative dearth of referrals involving White children is the
result of the authorities comparative hesitation to take White children into custody
for very serious offenses unless the evidence is strong and unambiguous, than we
would expect there to be relatively few cases involving White children but those
cases would have a relatively high adjudication rate. This is exactly what we nd in
these data.
Thus, these results may indicate that minority children are taken into custody and
formally processed by the juvenile court system more readily and for lesser conduct
than their White peers. A conclusion of selection bias is further strengthened by the
nding that minority children are more likely to be informally adjusted then are
White children. It is logical to assume that with a legally weak case the authorities
may hesitate to take the matter to a formal adjudication and may prefer to handle it
with an informal adjustment.
The other possibility is that the disproportionate representation of minorities
reects differences in offending patterns among minorities and non-minorities and
racial differences in the adjudication decision are the result of the juvenile courts
greater willingness to formally sanction White children. There is some empirical
support for the premise that disproportionately high rates of African-American
representation within the criminal justice system are the result of differential
involvement in crime rather than racially biased law enforcement (see, [18]).
The relatively low incidence of rape cases involving minority as opposed to
White perpetrators is also interesting. There were 81 cases involving White
perpetrators charged with rape compared with only 67 rape cases involving minority
perpetrators. When one considers these numbers in tandem with the baseline
population of all juveniles referred for either rape or robbery, signicant over-
representation of Whites among rapists becomes apparent. As previously noted,
only about 25 % of the cases in this study involved Whites, the remaining cases
involve minorities, yet well over half of the rape cases involve White juveniles.
The connection between rape and patriarchy is well-established in the literature
(see [5, 7, 8, 11, 13, 37, 53, 54]). While women are perhaps the most obvious
victims of patriarchy [19], it has long been recognized that patriarchy is a
hierarchical system in which not all males are equal [7, 44, 47]. Rather, elite males,
who are typically White in our society, have the highest social status and reap most
18 Gend. Issues (2012) 29:124
1 3
of the rewards of the inequality inherent in patriarchy while non-elite males are
subjugated and oppressed to a greater or lesser extent [29, 38, 40].
The greater prevalence of rape as a crime among the White male offenders under
study here may be a symptom of this reality. As the preeminent caste in our society,
White males may feel a greater sense of entitlement to exploit women and have a
lesser need to steal from other males in order to meet their economic needs and
wants. As a result, White males who offend may be more inclined to engage in rape
than robbery.
Another potential explanation posits that these results are not the result of
differences in offending behavior between Whites and minorities but rather reect
differences in victim and police behavior. Data suggests that Blacks and Whites are
equally likely to experience rape and sexual assault [14, 15]. In addition, the
evidence suggests that rape and other violent crimes tend to be intra-racial, meaning
that the victim and the perpetrator are usually of the same race [14, 44]. If minority
rape victims are less likely to report their victimization then their perpetrators who
are typically from their same racial group will be less likely to show up in ofcial
statistics which could create the erroneous impression that there are racial
differences in the likelihood of offenders to engage in rape versus robbery.
Contemporary evidence, however, does not suggest that White women are more
likely than minority women to report victimization to the police [14].
If differences are not attributable to victim behavior, perhaps it is due to the
behavior of the authorities. There is substantial evidence that police and other actors
within the criminal justice system are particularly likely to ignore the victimization
of minority women [1, 24, 28, 44] and expend more effort on cases involving White
victims [27]. If the sexual victimization of minority women is less likely to garner
the authorities attention or willingness to use the formal sanctions at their disposal,
even if victims report the crime, than that would reduce the appearance of minority
rapists in ofcial rape statistics. This could create the appearance of racial
differences in rape offending where none actually exists.
While the racial differences are stark, there is even greater disproportionality
when it comes to sex. Less than 4 % of the cases in this sample involved a female
perpetrator. This is probably due to the fact that all of the cases in this sample
involved serious violent crimes and females do not appear to commit violent crimes,
especially violent sex crimes, in the numbers that males apparently do. Not
surprisingly, given the lack of variation, sex appears to be relevant only with regard
to one of the outcomes measures, informal adjustment. Even there, sex exerts the
weakest inuence of all of the statistically signicant variables.
Genders most pronounced affect on the results of this study, however, may be
being masked due to the lack of denitive data regarding the victims gender in the
robbery cases. Clearly, the offense variable is highly correlated with the victims
gender because Missouri law dictates that only heterosexual assaults are charged as
forcible rape, meaning that nearly all of the victims of the rape cases in this sample
were female because all but 4 of the perpetrators were male. In all but the
certication decision where primary offense is insignicant, being charged with
rape (i.e. having a female victim) was the largest predictor of getting off easy. It
was more important than the perpetrators race, sex, age, prior record, concurrent
Gend. Issues (2012) 29:124 19
1 3
delinquencies and drug or alcohol use. Rapists were more likely to be informally
adjudicated and less likely to be detained or adjudicated delinquent than were their
peers charged with robbery. Although the sex of the robbery victims cannot be
known with certainty, national data from the same time period as the data used in
this study suggests that most of the robbery victims were probably male [14, 15, 45].
Thus, the primary offense variable can be viewed as a crude stand-in for the sex of
the victim. With that meaning ascribed to the primary offense variable, it seems
clear that committing a crime that primarily victimizes men is treated more harshly
by our system than a similar crime which primarily victimizes women.
Being under the inuence of drugs and alcohol at the time of the crime appears to
contribute to detention, adjudication and informal adjustment. While these results
seem somewhat paradoxical in that being under the inuence appears to be
contributing to both hard and soft sanctions, they may be accurately capturing the
duel inuence of drug and alcohol use. On the one hand, using drugs or alcohol is
illegal for all juveniles and thus substance abuse may be regarded as an
aggravating circumstance by decision-makers. In other words, substance abuse
might be viewed as an additional crime warranting further punishment. It could be
viewed as just one more indicator that this child has embraced a deviant lifestyle
and needs rm correction from the juvenile court. On the other hand, under other
circumstances or with different decision-makers, alcohol or drug use might be
regarded as mitigating or partially excusing the youths bad conduct. Being under
the inuence at the time of the crime can be viewed as an indication that the youth
has an underlying substance abuse problem and that addressing that problem will
correct the delinquent conduct which might cause a decision-maker to opt for an
informal adjustment on condition the youth get help.
It is interesting that so few of the cases actually resulted in certication given that
Missouri law requires the Juvenile Court to automatically have a certication
hearing for any child charged with forcible rape, robbery in the rst degree or one of
the other so-called seven deadly sins 211.071 R.S.Mo. Despite Missouris
seemingly harsh certication law which requires automatic hearings and eliminates
minimum age requirements for certication for these serious offenses, the juvenile
court only certied 49 out of 617 rape or robbery cases it processed between 2001
and 2004. From these data, it appears that the juvenile court quite appropriately
relied on age, concurrent delinquency and prior delinquency to determine whether
certication was appropriate. Race, sex and whether the child was charged with rape
or robbery were not statistically signicant contributors to the certication decision.
Conclusions
Probably the most signicant contribution of this study is to highlight the
devaluation of rape victims specically and women generally reected in these
nding which show a clear pattern of treating rape perpetrators (i.e. those who
primarily victimize women) more leniently than robbery perpetrators (i.e. those who
primarily victimize men). It can be seen in the laws greater protection of robbery
victims in terms of the black letter law as well as the statistically signicant effects
20 Gend. Issues (2012) 29:124
1 3
of being charged with robbery on predicting harsh outcomes and being charged with
rape on predicting more lenient outcomes.
Although these results are intriguing, there are several serious limitations with
these data. The most signicant of these limitations is the lack of denitive data
about victims characteristics. More research expressly looking at the victims sex is
necessary to establish when and under what circumstances the victimization of
women is devalued. In order to facilitate this future research, the Missouri juvenile
court should begin recording basic demographic data about victims for purposes of
analysis. At a minimum, the victims sex, age and race should be recorded. This
would allow the gendered application of the law and other issues to be more
denitively discerned and would help the court and policy makers to improve
processing to ensure that the victimization of all Missouri citizens is treated as a
serious matter and that perpetrators are not allowed to escape justice because of
their victims demographic characteristics.
Also, due to concerns about condentiality, DYS would not release data about
the circuit from which the case arose. The presence of minorities in Missouris
population varies dramatically. The great majority of Missouris minority popula-
tion is concentrated in its urban centers, particularly St. Louis. During the years
under study here, 20012004, about 70 % of the juveniles residing in the City of St
Louis were minority whereas in some rural counties like Holt minorities made up
only 1 % of the juvenile population [32]. If most of the rape and robbery cases arise
from St. Louis City and other urban centers, the apparent racial disproportionality
may be less pronounced than an examination of State level population data suggests.
Assuming that over-representation of urban jurisdictions alone does not fully
account for the observed racial disproportionality among the study population, some
of this disproportionality may be the result of unmeasured socio-economic factors.
Minority juveniles in Missouri are more likely to live in poverty [31]. Socioeco-
nomic deprivation and family dysfunction have been empirically linked to violent
juvenile crime and such conditions have also been found to be more characteristic of
minority neighborhoods for a variety of structural reasons [25]. In addition, it is
possible that urban and rural jurisdictions respond very differently to rape and
robbery cases which given the distribution of minorities in Missouri could have a
signicant impact on the results yet rural/urban differences cannot be examined or
controlled for due to the lack of data regarding the processing circuit.
It should also be noted that the federal government recently expanded its
denition of rape for purposes of the Uniform Crime Report. Rather than focusing
only on forcible vagina penetration, the new denition now counts as rape
penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or
object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of
the victim [22]. This new denition essentially encompasses what is dened as
forcible rape and forcible sodomy under Missouris current law and will permit law
enforcement here to report a more complete picture of violent sex offending in
Missouri. This new denition will also change the victim prole as homosexual
assaults and other assaults on male victims can be more easily accommodated by
this new denition.
Gend. Issues (2012) 29:124 21
1 3
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Author Biographies
M. Dyan McGuire, PhD, J.D., is an Associate Professor of Criminal Justice at Saint Louis University
and is the former Director of Criminal Justice.
Steve Donner graduated from Saint Louis University in 2008 with a BA in Criminal Justice and in 2011
with a J.D. He worked on this research as a Ronald E. McNair Scholar.
Elizabeth Callahan, J.D., is the former Associate Dean for Academic Development, School for
Professional Studies at Saint Louis University. She currently works for the Missouri Attorney Generals
Ofce.
24 Gend. Issues (2012) 29:124
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