Sexual Assault, Women, and the Community: Organizing to Prevent Sexual Violence (From Criminology as Peacemaking, 1991, P 98-113, Harold E. Pepinsky, Richard Quinney, eds. -- See NCJ- 138513)

• NCJ Number: 138515
• Author(s): S Caringella-MacDonald; D Humphries
• Date Published: 1991
• Length: 16 pages
• Sale Source: Indiana University Press
• Publication Type: Issue Overview
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This essay argues that statutory reform has failed to change the range of coping options open to women and to significantly improve the quality of options available to communities confronted with the problem of rape.

Abstract

The essay, which suggests that community organization can compensate at least in part for the limitations of statutory reform, focuses on three questions: what choices are currently available to individuals at risk of sexual violence; how can communities organize to address the problems of sexual violence against women; and what are the prospects for community contributions in the areas of individual options, legislative failures, and protections for women. Conversations among college- age women and surveys of attitudes toward rape provide the basis for the discussion of individual options. The discussion of community options is based on a Kalamazoo, Michigan, program designed to redress sexual assault. Individual options can be enhanced by improving criminal justice processes in terms of reporting and prosecuting choices and by communitywide attitudes regarding the violence directed against women. The community can offer an alternative response to law and order and criminal justice solutions and can follow the model provided by the Kalamazoo Task Force on Violence. 4 notes and 35 references