Description of the Data

The analytical sample in this study consists of 5,638 police reports of rape from a population of 6,071 rape reports from the Cleveland Division of Police (CDP)—all of which have an associated sexual assault kit (SAKs), also known as a rape kit, that was recently forensically tested for DNA as part of the Cuyahoga County Sexual Assault Kit (SAK) Initiative, This initiative, which is led by the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor's Office, is following up (via investigation and prosecution) on the now-tested SAKs from this jurisdiction. A SAK consists of items collected by medical professionals to preserve evidence from a victim of sexual assault. The U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) SAK Initiative was launched in 2015 to provide jurisdictions with funding to test and follow up on testing hundreds of thousands of previously untested sexual assault kits. The Cuyahoga County SAK Initiative, which began in 2013 (prior to the formation of the DOJ’s SAK Initiative), has received millions of dollars in funding from the DOJ’s SAK initiative to address the County’s untested SAKs. As part of our collaboration with the Cuyahoga County SAK Initiative as their research partner, we were given access to all rape reports with associated SAKs from CDP (n = 6,071).

These rape reports cover nearly a quarter center—from 1991 through 2015—although the vast majority (>99%) were between 1993 through 2011. While the initiative’s focus is on previously untested kits from 1993 through 2011, in some instances, if an offender was linked to a sexual assault outside of this time frame, they incorporated this sexual assault with the untested SAK’s investigation and prosecution. This explains why our sample includes some rape reports before 1993 and after 2011. These rape reports represent the near universe of CDP-reported rapes with associated SAKs during this time period. While some other jurisdictions “chipped away” at their older, untested kits over time, in Cuyahoga County (especially with CDP, which contributed >90% of all kits in the initiative), very few kits were regularly submitted for forensic testing before the late 2000s (Luminais, Lovell, & Flannery, 2017). This implies that our analytic sample is derived from untested SAKs representing almost all the SAKs collected in this jurisdiction during the time period. CDP rape reports not associated with a SAK were not available to the research team.

In terms of the information contained in the reports, these rape reports typically include: (a) an incident report taken by the responding officer(s) who is tasked with gathering the most pertinent facts and evidence and then forwarding the report to an investigator (detective) for follow-up, and (b) a summary of the investigative activity on the case as noted by the investigator, which (if reviewed by a prosecutor) includes some information about the prosecutorial review of the case. If applicable, the reports often denote the charging decision of the prosecutor to either “accept the case” (file charges) or not accept the case (do not file charges). If charges are filed, the reports often include the details about the grand jury (typically either presented to the grand jury or the outcome of presenting to the grand jury—no billed [not indicted] or true billed [indicted]). Given that these are police files, information as to the final adjudication of the case (guilty, not guilty, plea) is typically not included. Cuyahoga County has both a city and county prosecutor’s office, where simplistically, felonies are prosecuted at the county level and misdemeanors at the city level; however, rapes are first reviewed by Cleveland prosecutors before being forwarded to County prosecutors, even though the city prosecutor’s office does not prosecute rape. The mention of prosecutorial involvement in the reports could indicate Cleveland and/or the County.

Reference

Luminais, M., Lovell, R., & Flannery, D. (2017). Changing Culture through Sharing Space: A Case Study of the Cuyahoga County Sexual Assault Kit Task Force. Begun Center for Violence Prevention Research and Education at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences at Case Western Reserve University. http://hdl.handle.net/2186/ksl:2006061456

Appendix A Extraction, conversion, and cleaning protocols: Why data preparation took so long