Highlights
Yes, the alleged rape case at Cornell is disturbing (all crimes are alleged until a guilty finding). Incidents involving potentially serious felonies at universities should be investigated by trained law-enforcement investigators independent of any university. The legal process is now playing out.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul appointed Attorney General Letitia James as special prosecutor, and the case has been reopened. Reuters reported October 1 that the case is now headed toward a grand jury process.
What we need to understand is that a large percentage of sexual-assault and other criminal cases do not progress through the justice system, and there is substantial attrition at several stages.
Per the latest Bureau of Justice Statistics yearly crime document, 23.6 percent of rape and sexual assault cases were reported to the police in 2024 (see below for a methodological caution).
Per the Bureau of Justice Statistics, only 13.5 percent of urban rapes and sexual assaults are reported to the police.
Many know of the limitations of the justice system, which guarantees that this discussion will happen again.
Per USA Today, “This is a somewhat extraordinary case in many ways, but in other ways it’s depressingly ordinary,”
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A comprehensive overview of crime for recent years is available at Violent and Property Crime Rates In The U.S.
Opinion–Analysis
I find many aspects of the alleged Cornell University rape disturbing (all crimes are alleged until a guilty finding). I want my wife and daughters to move through life unmolested by anyone, regardless of the circumstances.
However, we will go through this discussion multiple times in the coming years. The justice system is under immense pressure to move cases quickly. Dropped criminal cases by prosecutors or the courts are common.
In my university criminology and criminal justice courses, I was told that the justice system operates under severe financial limits. As the director of public information for a huge state police and corrections agency, I was told that the most important and powerful person there was the individual in charge of finances, and the mortal sin (via government bean counters) was to exceed our budget.
I wrote an article about Baltimore’s State’s Attorney, who bragged about an extremely high conviction rate. He got there by dropping criminal cases.
If prosecutors take a criminal case into court that is not ironclad (substantially beyond a reasonable doubt), they will get chewed out in chambers by the judge. As a police officer, I was told to make solid arrests that would withstand a judge’s scrutiny.
Making Excuses
For some, what’s above will mark me as an apologist for the justice system and possibly someone uncaring about what happened at Cornell (regardless of my decades of advocacy for victims of crime). But any veteran of the justice system (including experienced crime reporters) knows I’m right.
If anyone looked at how the justice system processed cases, they would be alarmed. No one in government or advocacy is unaware of the dynamics, yet critics condemn the system while knowing its historical limitations.
Criminal cases are dropped (or suspended) at multiple stages of the process for a variety of reasons, most commonly because probable cause cannot be clearly established. Most violent crimes involve people who know each other, which can make prosecutions challenging.
How Many Criminal Cases Are Dropped By Prosecutors?
In FY 2023, about 8.5% of defendants adjudicated in U.S. district courts had their cases dismissed, while another 0.4% were acquitted at trial. Of 71,866 adjudicated defendants, 6,106 were dismissed.
That’s after federal prosecutors had decided to prosecute. It does not include cases that prosecutors declined before formally prosecuting them.
At an earlier stage, the numbers are considerably different. In FY 2023, U.S. attorneys prosecuted only 61% of suspects in matters concluded. In other words, about 39% were not prosecuted, although “declined” is not synonymous with “dropped criminal cases” because the matters include investigations that may never have resulted in a formal charge.
I have seen charts from the Bureau of Justice Statistics showing that, in some categories, over 50 percent of federal cases were not prosecuted.
After a case reached federal district court, the prosecutor or the judge may have entered the dismissal.
The important point is not that every case should be prosecuted or that every prosecutorial decision is wrong; it is that enormous attrition occurs between victimization, reporting, investigation, arrest, charging, conviction and incarceration, and that attrition is a longstanding feature of the American criminal-justice system.
Historical research from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) found that about 19% of felony cases were dismissed by judges or prosecutors in the felony courts studied.
Another BJS analysis found that, when looking at felony arrests, approximately 52% did not result in a conviction, including cases rejected by prosecutors, dismissed, diverted, or ending in acquittal.
While we have fresh data from the federal government, state numbers are not nearly as well documented. Considering the age of state analysis by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, readers need to exercise caution.
But the bottom line is that a heck of a lot of criminal cases NEVER make it to trial. It’s been this way for decades.
Rape And Sexual Assault Cases
A National Institute of Justice-sponsored study examined 666 sexual-assault cases involving an arrest in Kansas City, Philadelphia, and Miami. Prosecutors filed charges in just over half of the rape cases that resulted in an arrest. In other words, roughly half were not charged by prosecutors in those jurisdictions.
A subsequent NIJ-sponsored study of Kansas City and Miami found almost exactly the same thing: prosecutors filed charges in 57.5% of sexual-assault cases in Kansas City and 58.6% in Miami.
Thus, in those studies, approximately 42%–43% of sexual-assault cases were not charged by prosecutors.
NIJ research illustrates this dramatically. In one study of sexual-assault cases, only 18% of the 371 cases examined ultimately resulted in a conviction, while charges were filed in 81 cases.
Another NIJ study found that among 208 sexual-assault cases in which an arrest was made, 12% were not charged; among those, 40.3% involved the prosecutor deciding not to file charges, 6.5% were administratively dismissed by law enforcement, and 53.2% received a grand-jury “no true bill.”
There is no current national statistic showing how many reported rape and sexual-assault cases are rejected by state prosecutors. Department of Justice-sponsored studies, however, have found substantial prosecutorial attrition.
Thus, roughly four in ten sexual-assault cases resulting in an arrest were not charged in those jurisdictions.
A 2025 systematic review examined 36 studies involving 288,066 sexual-assault cases, covering research published concerning 2000–2020. It found, across the studies:
- 27.25% resulted in arrest
- 31.36% were referred to prosecution
- 19.58% were charged
- 8.28% resulted in conviction
FBI crime data shows that law enforcement clears 26% of reported rape cases. In this data, “cleared” may mean someone was arrested or even that the suspect was deceased; it does not necessarily mean the perpetrator was charged, convicted, incarcerated, or otherwise held accountable.
The clearance rate directs our attention to the 74% of survivors of rape whose cases remain unresolved every year. That’s at least 125,274 people who reached out for justice they may never receive.
4 in 5 reported perpetrators are never charged with a crime. For many survivors, reporting sexual violence means entering a system where the outcome is uncertain. A report may be investigated, cleared, closed, declined, or moved forward, but only a fraction of reported cases lead to criminal charges.
About three-quarters of reported rape offenses were not cleared by law enforcement.
This number points to one reality: many survivors report sexual violence without seeing the person who harmed them formally charged with a crime.
Justice System Limitations
For the uninitiated, consider the following:
Rape Kit and DNA analysis backlogs are huge.
Urban prosecutor caseloads are endless. The same applies to public defenders. In many jurisdictions, they are overwhelmed.
Most crimes and sexual assaults are not reported to law enforcement, per the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Forty-eight percent of violent crimes are reported.
Per the latest Bureau of Justice Statistics, 23.6 percent of rape and sexual assault cases were reported to the police in 2024 (latest data), down from 46.0 percent in the previous year. But the National Crime Victimization Survey is in the process of a redesign (with a different set of questions), and that may have affected the decline. See the methodology of the report.
Per the Bureau of Justice Statistics, only 13.5 percent of urban rapes and sexual assaults are reported to the police.
Police clearance measures (i.e., an arrest or suspect identification) fell substantially during and after the pandemic, although more recent data show some improvement.
We just lost 25,000 police officers and personnel per Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The latest BLS data suggest that we gained most of that back in recent years. But we lost a lot of experienced officers and criminal investigators.
The overwhelming majority (90-95 percent) of criminal convictions are obtained through guilty pleas via plea bargains rather than trials. Plea agreements routinely involve reductions in the original charges, although the extent to which this occurs in sexual-assault cases varies substantially by jurisdiction and case. Charged rapes can become assaults per a plea-bargained guilty plea.
The average time served in state prisons was 1.3 years per the Bureau of Justice Statistics. For violent crimes, the median time served is 2.4 years. Note that time served is vastly different than the original sentence.
Most guilty felony cases do not receive a state prison sentence.
I could go on with additional examples of a stressed criminal justice system.
Conclusions
It’s not like every crime journalist and politician in the country doesn’t know the data above. Every advocate knows the limits of what the justice system is capable of doing (and what it’s not).
Advocates will tell you that the justice system is heavy-handed and excessive when they know that’s not the case. From unreported crimes (most crimes are not reported) to case processing (dropped or suspended cases) to massive plea bargaining with reduced sentences to short periods of time served in prison, the advantages often belong to the criminal offender.
It’s no secret that the justice system is struggling. Streamlining the system to move cases is necessary. If we didn’t, the justice system would collapse in weeks.
I was asked by a major newspaper what crime television shows I liked. I replied, “None of them.” In TV land, there are always sufficient numbers of experienced criminal investigators backed by twenty-something computer analysts who solve cases quickly and get guilty pleas with long sentences. Bull hockey.
The justice system is filled with cops and others who want sufficient funds to adequately investigate every criminal case, with a successful prosecution resulting in a consequence that is appropriate to the crime.
Regardless of the Cornell investigation, most sex offenders are getting away unpunished. There is little accountability based on non-reporting alone.
Yes, every rape and every criminal case and every victim of crime deserves courtesy and protection. But it’s obvious that we have no choice but to streamline the process or it collapses. There are times when mistakes are made.
We within the justice system know our realities, but little changes. The politicians, advocates, and crime journalists know our challenges as they document our shortcomings. We all want justice. But justice for victims can be taxing for a multitude of reasons.
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