As reported in the New York Daily News, the FBI is close to approving a new official definition of rape. The proposed wording would criminalize forcible sexual penetration “no matter how slight.”

 

I’ve been researching crime statistics: sexual assaults, drug crimes and fugitives, and accumulating data about the federal, state, FBI, and DEA most-wanted lists. Though “Googling” won’t get me into the police files, what can be found is nothing less than startling. The most important elements of the modern crime waves that are currently sweeping our country are going unreported, or are so quietly and deceptively reported as to be meaningless to the ordinary news reader.

 

Rape and sexual assault has always been a confused category. Definitions have been all over the place. This new policy, if put in place, is, I’m guessing, going to make it even more difficult for the agencies to report to the media the significant facts and to collect, organize and categorize data. It may become much harder for people – interested citizens – to understand the reality and actual nature of these violent crimes, and most importantly, for actual assault victims to get justice. Expansions into allegations of “penetration, no matter how slight,” though they may be real assaults, leave policing and prosecuting in an ever tougher spot. Certainly all offenders should be caught and punished, but this policy feels like a potential open can of worms. Maybe it more realistically aligns with actual police work: “We prosecute by one criteria, but we report by another criteria,” and “The only people who have a true picture of what’s going on are the people in the sex-crimes unit.”

 

I’m no expert, just an interested party with a computer. But, the data seem to be thinning and stretching out into so many agencies, into irrelevant and nonsensical categories, charts and tables that no one is going to be able to find them, much less make sense out of them or understand just who the criminals are and how to recognize and identify them.