A Rapist Lurks On Every Corner Of Suburbia

Regarding "We must fix the culture that gives rise to rapists" (Sunday Outlook A34), to prove that this culture exists, Leonard Pitts cites statistics from a group known as RAINN (Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network), the most dubious of which claims that "only six in every thousand perpetrators of sexual assault end up in prison."

Let's start with the fact that on the front page of RAINN's own website, they insist that "Only three out of every 100 rapists will ever spend even a single day in prison", five times the rate cited by Pitts from the same source.  Clearly, RAINN and Pitts wish to create the impression that there are millions of rapists roaming the streets, but on their own terms, exactly how big would that number be?  According to Prisonpolicy.org, 169,000 convicts are currently in prison for rape, a bigger percentage of the prison population than for any violent crime but robbery.  Taking Pitts at his word about six out of 1000 being convicted, that would mean that for this sample alone, there's an additional 28,000,000 rapists wandering free.   

That number is clearly absurd, but it points to the interesting fashion in which advocates of a "rape culture" game the statistics.  Now they wish to add the new spin of "White Male Privilege" to the mix, resulting in a perfect storm of nonsense, seeing as how white males per capita commit far fewer rapes than black or Latino males.

There are usable statistics to cite to discuss the problem of rape.  Unfortunately, this article doesn't include any of them. 

Pete Smith

Cypress, TX