Research

Violence against women is highly prevalent worldwide, yet it remains underreported and rarely prosecuted. This paper examines whether increased media visibility of such violence affects how cases are processed by the criminal justice system. It combines novel administrative microdata on criminal cases with high-frequency data on daily TV news broadcasts in France. Striking judicial patterns emerge: despite a growing number of reported cases of violence against women over time, nearly 80% are dismissed by prosecutors at the outset of the judicial process, making this stage a critical point of case attrition. Leveraging the quasi-random timing of TV news stories relative to the processing of cases, I find that news coverage of crimes against women unrelated to the cases at hand reduces the likelihood of dismissal in the short run, with a 2.3% increase in the prosecution rate in the week following the news coverage. This shift appears to be driven both by the increased salience of violence against women and by strategic adjustments in prosecutors' behavior in response to heightened public scrutiny. Although sentencing decisions remain directly unaffected, cases prosecuted following news coverage of crimes against women are just as likely to result in conviction as those prosecuted on other days. As a result, increased media visibility enables more viable cases to reach trial without influencing judges’ rulings, thereby strengthening the overall judicial response to violence against women. 

Working paper out soon!

Sexual violence and its underreporting are major social problems. This study examines the determinants of reporting recent sexual violence to the police, using data from the French victimization survey conducted annually from 2007 to 2019 on a large, nationally representative sample. This article shows that the propensity to report is significantly higher among victims with low socioeconomic status and those who sustained physical injuries. Leveraging unique data on the reasons for not reporting, the study analyzes the mechanisms through which these two structural factors operate on the reporting process. The lower reporting rate among victims of higher socioeconomic status is better explained by their greater awareness of the low likelihood of a successful trial, rather than by a fear of social stigma. Conversely, the significant impact of physical injuries on reporting stems more from greater alignment with the “classic rape” stereotype than from better prospects for winning a case based on concrete evidence.

Link to pdf