Dissertation
THE IMPACT OF A SPECIALIZED PROSECUTION UNIT FOR SEXUAL VIOLENCE CASES ON CASE OUTCOMES
Washington State University
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
01/2021
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7273/000002417
Handle:
https://hdl.handle.net/2376/120197
Abstract
Sexual violence is a devastating act that can have serious negative effects on its victims. However, sexual violence cases are consistently underreported and have high case attrition rates. Some scholars attribute this phenomenon to the prevalence of rape myths in the decision-making process of the criminal justice system. Rape myths and societal stereotypes can “vanish” sexual offenses by redefinition, which affects the probability of conviction. As a way to improve prosecutorial responses to sexual violence cases, some jurisdictions in the United States have begun implementing specialized units that exclusively prosecute sexual violence cases. However, there are relatively few studies that have explored the impact of specialized prosecution units for sexual violence cases on case outcomes.I hypothesize that the presence of a specialized prosecution unit for sexual violence cases will have a significant impact on the outcome of cases, increasing the number of convictions and decreasing the number of acquittals or dismissals. This study is an advance over previous research not only by examining the effect of a specialized prosecution unit on case outcomes but also by using more methodologically robust analyses to investigate those effects. Archived records of adult defendants’ case disposition results were obtained from the Washington State Administrative Office of the Courts. Three separate analyses were used to address the research question: propensity score matching, multinomial logistic regression, and multi-level multinomial logistic regression analyses. Adult defendant cases involving sexual violence crimes between 1990 and 2018 were used as the study’s dataset. The findings of the study reveal that the presence of a specialized prosecution unit for sexual violence cases does not have a significant impact on case outcomes. To avoid any possibility that the use of such units could marginalize victims’ issues, I conclude that more research is needed to deepen our understanding of the effectiveness of a specialized prosecution unit for sexual violence cases.
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Details
- Title
- THE IMPACT OF A SPECIALIZED PROSECUTION UNIT FOR SEXUAL VIOLENCE CASES ON CASE OUTCOMES
- Creators
- So Hee Kim
- Contributors
- Dale Willits (Advisor)Craig Hemmens (Committee Member)Faith Lutze (Committee Member)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- Criminal Justice and Criminology, Department of
- Theses and Dissertations
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
- Publisher
- Washington State University
- Number of pages
- 148
- Identifiers
- 99900606753801842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Dissertation