Violence against women is a chronic yet difficult issue to study because of low reporting rates and inconsistent data collection. Nevertheless, it’s vitally important that we understand the prevalence of these types of crime to understand how we can better support survivors. In this study, data on calls for services, police case fillings, cases that went for felony review, and community-based services provided to survivors, all produce varying estimates of how common these types of crimes are and how likely they are to be prosecuted. Ultimately, this study underlines the need for more coherent and accurate data collection, hints at a significant impact on reporting rates of such crimes due to the pandemic and highlights the importance of expanding support services for survivors.
Note: We acknowledge that “violence against women “crimes do not exclusively impact women. Men and boys can also be survivors of rape, domestic abuse or battery, sexual assault and sexual offenses and their experiences are no less important to study. Nevertheless, as the Illinois Coalition against domestic violence points out , “domestic violence continues to affect women at a disproportionately high rate”. The National Sexual Violence Resource Center confirms that 91% of survivors of rape and sexual assault are women. Additionally, we acknowledge that this study lacks the nuance to identify transgender and non-binary individuals who can also be survivors of this type of assault. We continue to use the term “violence against women” acknowledging that it is not fully capturing the reality that this violence impacts all people, not just women.
Office of Emergency Management and Communications
Unless an incident is directly observed by police, the first step to reporting a crime is to call emergency services. Between 2017 and 2020 over 25 million such calls were made to the Office of Emergency and Communications in the city of Chicago. We analyzed this data by filtering by the final classification of the type of crime being called about (sometimes call classifications change between the beginning and end of the call as more details emerge about the incident). We found that the most common calls were either police officers calling in traffic stops, individuals or police officers calling for non-police services, or calls that ended in a hang-up. We flagged calls as related to violence against women when they were about domestic battery, criminal sexual assault[1] and sex offense[2].
The majority of these types of calls were about domestic battery, and overall, domestic battery calls consistently rank in the top 30 types of all calls made each year (behind misdials, suspected misuse, auto accidents, disturbances and emergency medical services). Compared to other types of crimes, domestic battery calls are far more common. For example, a domestic battery call is 3.5 times more common than a call about a robbery, and 6 times more common than calls about a person being shot. On average, there were about 49,000 calls per year about domestic violence. Calls about sexual offenses were far less common at about 9,800 per year and calls about criminal sexual assault were the least common with an average of just under 5,000 per year. There were several notable drops in the number of calls made about certain crimes in 2020, for example, we observed a 70% drop in calls about sex offender visits, and a 22% drop in calls about reporting a criminal sexual assault[3].
These types of calls (domestic battery, criminal sexual assault, and sexual offense) together make up about 1.2% of calls (ignoring misdials, hang-ups and misuse calls, or so called “mishaps”). This might not sound like a lot, but the most common call type, ignoring calls made by police officers, hang ups, and EMS, is disturbance calls, which make up just 3.3% of all non-mishap calls. The vast majority of all other types of calls make up far less than 1% of calls. Together, this suggests that up to 1 out of every 100 non-mishap calls is a call relating to violence against women.
Chicago Police Department Case Data
After a call is made to emergency services either a report is taken over the phone or a police officer is sent to the scene of the incidence to determine if a case needs to be filed. We studied this next step in the process by analyzing Chicago Police Department (CPD) case data from 2017 to 2019 that was accessed through a freedom of information request and includes the status of cases filed with the CPD for criminal sexual assault, battery, and sex offenses[4]. Details on the criminal descriptions can be found here. The status of the case can be open (and assigned/unassigned or original), suspended, unfounded, cleared (and closed/open), exceptionally cleared (and closed/open), and closed non-criminal[5]. There is no case outcome data for 2020, so the analysis of the cases outcomes is only for 2017 to 2019.
One of the most important case statuses is exceptionally cleared, meaning an offender has been identified, there is enough evidence to support an arrest, make a charge and turn over the offender to court for persecution, they have the offender’s location (so an arrest can be made immediately) but law enforcement has encountered a circumstance outside their control that makes it impossible to arrest, charge and prosecute the offender. For example, if the offender has died or the survivor is no longer cooperating the police can exceptionally clear the case without an arrest.
The over-use of exceptionally cleared cases has come under scrutiny recently as a way that police departments have inflated their clearance rate (a metric from which they are often judged), especially when it comes to domestic violence and sexual assault cases which can be particularly hard to investigate and prosecute. The main point is that even if a case is cleared, it does not necessarily mean the offender has been prosecuted or sentenced.
Sexual Assault
Between 2017 and 2020 there were an average of 1,521 sexual assault cases per year. Cases were above 1,600 per year between 2017 and 2019 and dropped notably to 1,118 cases in 2020, likely related to the COVID-19 pandemic and stay at home orders, which could have made it more dangerous to report a sexual assault or domestic violence case (especially if the survivor lives with the offender). This lines up with the data about services calls which also show a drop in calls about sexual assault during 2020.
Only between 15% and 20% of sexual assault cases were closed between 2017 and 2019, and more than half of these (58% – 64%) were exceptionally cleared. This suggests that far fewer than 10% of sexual assault cases reported to the Chicago Police Department result in an arrest or prosecution. These crimes are overwhelming legitimate- on average less than 8% of cases were unfounded.
Domestic Violence
Between 2017 and 2020, domestic violence cases were 13 times more common than sexual assault, at an average of 25,980 cases per year, with a noticeable drop in 2020. On average, between 2017 and 2019, 52% of cases were closed and 58% of these were exceptionally closed.
Overall, during the 4-year time period there were 6,084 cases of sexual assault and 2,505 cases of sexual offense. Given that these types of crimes are notoriously underreported, this is very likely a significant under count of the number of occurrences of such violence in the city. Given that the number of calls about sexual assault and offense are far higher than the number of cases (20,000 and 40,000 respectively), the true estimate of the number of occurrences is hard to track, especially because calls could have been made multiple times by the same person. To get an idea of the true number of incidences of such violence, we made an estimate based on the National Crime Victimization Survey.
National Crime Victimization Survey
The National Crime Victimization survey’s most recent results are from 2019 and indicate that only 41% of rape or sexual assault cases are reported to the police. If this were true in Chicago as well, that would mean there were 14,905 sexual assault occurrences and 6,137 sexual offense occurrences in Chicago during this period. While we don’t have data on the race of the survivor in the CPD cases data, the survey found that Black and Hispanic survivors were more likely to report cases to the police, at 49%, than their white counterparts at only 37%.
Domestic violence is more likely to be reported to the police than rape or sexual assault at 52% and is even more likely to be reported if the perpetrator was an intimate partner (58%) rather than a stranger (40%). If it is true that in Chicago only 52% of domestic violence is reported to the police, this would infer that just over 200,000 cases of domestic violence occurred between 2017 and 2020, for an average of 50,141 cases a year. This estimate is close to the number of calls about domestic battery that are received every year (average of 49,000). However, even this estimate could be undercount of long-running trends because 2020 impacted reporting rates for violence against women.
Cook County State’s Attorney
Compared to the number of calls and cases, the number of cases about violence against women that go through the Cook County State’s Attorney Office is low[6]. We pulled data about felony reviews (when police seek approval for felony charges) for crimes that occurred in Chicago between 2017 and 2020, and cases where the original offense charge was either domestic battery, sex crimes or attempted sex crimes. We only studied cases that were felony charges (as opposed to misdemeanors). Offense charges are often changed by the end of the trial due to plea deals, so we focused on pulling data dependent on the original offense charge, not the final offense charge. There were a total of 631 cases processed during this time-period. Most were domestic battery cases (340), followed by sex crimes (289) and attempted sex crimes (only 2 cases, both during 2019). Overwhelming the defendant on trial was male (620), however, this high figure is probably impacted by the fact that even if men are survivors of this type of crime, they might be less likely to come forward for help, or report the incident, given the stigma about this being a “women’s issue”. Like the other data, there was a dramatic drop in cases during 2020 likely because of the pandemic. In 2020 only 13 domestic battery cases were completed, compared to 78 in 2019, 120 in 2018 and 129 in 2017.
Service Data
Lastly, we analyzed data on the number of clients served by community-based domestic and sexual violence service providers. On average, between 2017-2020, an estimated 12,600-13,600 clients received these kinds of services each year. As with the rest of the data, there was a sharp drop in clients served in 2020 to just 10,751. 90% of clients were seeking help for domestic violence, which tracks with the previous data suggesting how much more common domestic violence is than sexual assault or offenses.
Three Key Take-Aways
- It’s very difficult to estimate the prevalence of violence against women. Part of this is because we know cases are underreported in general, but also because the data we do have is difficult to obtain (often requiring a freedom of information request) and hard to analyze because of different terminology used between databases. For example, there is no case that is labelled as sexual assault or domestic violence in the State’s Attorney data. They instead choose to use the phrases “domestic battery” and “sex crimes” which do not directly match the terms used by the Chicago Police Department. Implementing universal language, or the use of common UCR (uniform crime reporting) codes across databases within the criminal justice system would make it easier to study crime.
- The COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown likely had a large impact on the prevalence of violence against women, but also women’s access to services. Not only were cases already in the court system unable to be processed, but it’s been suggested by organization such as RAINN (the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network) that the stay-at-home orders increased the risk of domestic violence because this type of crime is most often committed by someone the survivor knows and/or lives with. Even if the survivor does not live with the offender, simply being in more contact with the perpetrator can make it riskier to report such a crime (for example, they can monitor your phone if you use it for reporting). The data for 2020 is likely an outlier given the circumstances. However, it is notable that the smallest drop in the data was for calls for help, suggesting the need for help was robust, but cases filed or prosecuted, and services provided were limited.
- The work of community-based services that aid survivors of domestic violence or sexual assault can help increase reporting rates and ensure women get their cases filed and prosecuted. It’s difficult to prosecute violence against women cases and these support services can help both the survivor and the police secure justice. Given the large need for support, these programs should be expanded to help meet the needs of survivors of violence against women.
[1] Includes cases where CSA was on view, resulted in an injured person, just occurred, and CSA report writing
[2] Includes sex offense visit and “other”
[3] In most of the data studied, 2020 was a significant outlier due to COVID-19 lockdowns which disrupted crime and reporting rates, so 4-year averages may differ from longer-run trends.
[4] These broad categories are broken down into: aggravated (crime includes use of weapon, bodily harm to survivor, threats, or several occurrences), predatory (relating to age of survivor and perpetrator), non-aggravated cases, or simple (unarmed).
[5] An open case is actively being worked on, a suspended case is not closed, but also not being actively worked on. However, if new evidence is found it will be investigated. If a case is unfounded, it means there was an investigation, but police found no evidence of a crime. If a case is cleared it means either: (1) an arrest was made or (2) a suspect was found. If a case is both cleared and closed, either 1 or 2 happened, and no further work is being done on the case. If a case is cleared and still open, either 1 or 2 happened, but they are still actively working on the case.
[6] We are not able to connect calls or cases directly to the cases that go through the State’s Attorney’s office. We are comparing generalized averages of the types of cases, not individual cases which cannot be traced through the entire justice system.