Instead of Prisons Table of Contents > Chapter 8

8. NEW RESPONSES TO CRIMES WITH VICTIMS

When abolitionists urge alternatives to imprisonment, invariably the cry is raised, "But what about the rapist? What about the street criminals? What would you do with them?"

Because prison abolitionists must face the challenge of finding nonincarcerative solutions to crimes that are brutal and damaging, we will consider them here. Our study convinces us that genuine solutions to the problem of rape and other violent crimes are in no way related to imprisonment of offenders. Prison merely punishes individual scapegoats but does not address the collective responsibility for culturally or economically induced behavior. Instead, efforts to prevent crimes with victims must be directed toward changing social conditions which foster criminality and empowering victims to resist victimization.

The majority of street crimes, for example, are committed by the poor against the poor -- a powerless class. Street crimes are predominantly economic crimes rooted in the inequities of the system, and they will increase as unemployment and inflation rise. Solutions are bound up in systemic change: there will be no more crimes of the poor when there are no longer any poor.

Likewise, we have discovered that the roots of criminal violence toward women and children lie deep within the culture of this society. Thus, prevention of the crime of rape must be directed to changing social conditions which foster violence and sexism. Tho the victims of the crime of rape are justifiably angry, the focus of that righteous anger should not be dissipated in pursuit of the (non)solution of caging rapists. Rather energies should be directed toward true solutions of this ugly community problem. These include changing values and attitudes about girls and women and creating the kinds of community alternatives that provide opportunities for re‑educating and resocializing rapists and other potential sexual aggressives.

All physical threats of violence must be dealt with seriously by both the community and individuals. It is unacceptable to be physically harmed by another person, whether that violence comes from the rapist, police officer, armed robber, organized crime or the government. Victims have been perceived as powerless beings waiting to be preyed upon. But slowly, this is changing: victims are refusing to be victims any longer. Victims are bringing about the new response, not thru a law enforcement/war model, but thru a victim empowerment model--a liberation model. Based on an authentic analysis of their circumstances and empowered by concrete nonviolent acts, victims are learning that they can change their situations.

Unprecedented victim‑empowerment lessons can he learned from the development of the feminist rape crisis and child advocacy movements. This class of victims is gradually bringing about change. Because their experiences should set an example for new responses to other crimes with victims, we have chosen to examine the crime of rape in some depth. The analysis of rape and of street crimes on the following pages is from the victims' perspective--an angry perspective‑one rarely heard publicly.

As we examine the crime of rape, we are overwhelmed by the diversity of our discoveries and how much they reveal about present realities and future hopes for justice. We discover the depth of violence in our culture. We discover the intricate web of myths surrounding the powerless. We discover the biases of penal codes and legal procedures that favor the powerful. We discover the ideology of "blaming the victim." We discover the beginnings of a movement for victims, self‑empowered, self‑defined. We discover responses that provide a whole new range of services to victims and victimizers. And we discover the enormity of the tasks before us.

Crimes against women & children

Rape: Myths & realities

The data in this section is based not only on research by scientists, but also on first‑hand reports by rape victims and workers in rape crisis centers.

Myth: A rapist is a sexually unfulfilled man carried away by a sudden uncontrollable surge of sexual desire.

Reality: A rapist is a man whose sexuality finds its expression in domination, control and degradation of a victim. The majority of rapes are planned in advance.

This myth rationalizes rape and excuses the rapist by arguing that rape is an impulsive act, innate and universal‑an aspect of "animal nature," motivated by sexual needs which cannot go unfulfilled. This is not borne out by cross‑cultural studies; they suggest that male aggression and hostility expressed thru sexuality are culturally induced, learned behaviors rather than man's "natural" instinct.[1]

Both victims' experiences and independent interviews with rapists strongly suggest that the desire to control, humiliate and violate is a primary motivation in rape. [2 ]This theory partially coincides with findings from limited studies conducted at prisons and mental institutions. Of the convicted rapists studied, most seem to be motivated by feelings of contempt and hostility toward women and by a variety of rage‑producing conditions in their lives.[3]

In a culture where masculinity is equated with control, force, dominance, power, strength and competitiveness, rape is an extreme acting out of these qualities. Insofar as sex is an area where these attitudes about masculinity are most intensely expressed, sexuality does play a part in the rapist's act of aggression.

Myth: Rape is impossible without the woman's consent.

Reality: Women do not consent to the act of rape.

This myth is one expressed by doctors, defense lawyers, police officers and district attorneys and perpetuated by the media. It is expressed in "jokes:" "a woman with her skirt up can run faster than a man with his pants down."

This myth is used to place the burden of guilt on the woman, by implying that she somehow agreed to or invited her victimization. Victims are knocked unconscious, they are attacked by surprise, they are threatened with death or serious physical harm, drugged, threatened with guns and knives, physically beaten into submission and psychologically terrorized into passivity. Frequently a rape victim's greatest fear is that she will be killed.

Myth: Women who are raped usually have provoked the attack.

Reality: A rape victim is not responsible for the fact that she is attacked.

"Blaming the victim" is used as an argument to shift blame from the rapist to the victim. It is often combined with moral judgments of the victim's character ("Are you a virgin?" "Do you sleep with men other than your husband?") to claim that she should he denied legal rights, implying that she must have provoked the sexual encounter.[4]

From this viewpoint it is argued that there is something psychologically different about victims and nonvictims of rape. "Good girls don't get raped." "What were you wearing?" "Why did you get into his car/his apartment/walk home alone?" Essentially these questions establish victim guilt. "You were leading him on and asking for it."[5]

Children of all ages, men and boys in prisons and juvenile homes, babies, and pregnant or handicapped women have all been victims of rape as well as young women who may be "attractive" or "beautiful" by male definitions. Rapists themselves say that the victim's availability and vulnerability made her a prime target, not her individual "beauty" or "provocative" manner.[6]

Myth: Rapists are pathologically sick and perverted men.

Reality: Men who force a woman to have an unwanted sexual encounter are indistinguishable from the general male population.

This myth has been used to obscure the fact that our culture encourages aggression in males, especially sexual aggression. In addition, typing the rapist as a "murderous sex fiend" serves the function of keeping women frightened and submissive[7], yet unaware of the most common source of danger‑the men in their neighborhoods and homes.

Until recently, sociological and psychological research conducted on convicted rapists tended to verify this myth, focusing on psychological characteristics, family background and "criminal subculture" of the rapist rather than dominant cultural factors and norms which might encourage sexual aggression against females. [8]

The scanty information we do have, however--F.B.I. U.C.R. statistics, recent sociological studies, statistics and information from rape crisis centers, and interviews with victims and rapists‑all refute the myth of the psychologically deranged rapist. Altho the psychotic rapist does exist, as does the psychotic murderer, he is the extreme exception. Listening to victims and to the few rapists who have spoken out, we discover that there is no "typical" rapist but that he is less likely to be a "deviant sexual psychopath" than a married businessman, a street‑wise teenager or a fraternity brother.

Those men (rapists) were the most normal men there (San Luis Obispo prison). They had a lot of hang‑ups, but they were the same hang‑ups as men walking the street.

‑Alan Taylor, parole officer, quoted in Pat Miller and Joanne Parrent, "Some Factual Information," in Kathy Barry, et al., ed., Stop Rape (Ann Arbor, Michigan, Women Against Rape, 1971) p. 2

Myth: Most rapes occur on the street or to women who hitchhike.

Reality: About half of reported rapes occur in the victim's home.

The Denver Anti‑Crime Council study, "The Crime of Rape in Denver," revealed that in 41.2 percent of cases studied, the victim was either at home engaged in routine daily activities or sleeping when the rape was initiated; in 26 percent of cases she was attending a recreational or sports activity and in less than five percent she was hitchhiking.[9]

Myth: The typical rapist is a stranger to the victim.

Reality: Victims are raped by acquaintances, neighbors, family friends, dates, boyfriends, lovers, fathers, brothers and uncles as well as by strangers.

"Shadow" statistics, documenting cases which were not reported to police but to rape crisis centers, friends, private physicians, psychiatrists and mental health centers, are not included in official studies. Cases of wife‑rape for instance, never appear in official statistics because by the legal definition of rape, a husband cannot rape his wife. Women who are raped by friends or ex‑husbands are extremely reluctant to report due to widespread insensitivity and harassment by police and courts.

Despite these inhibitors, most studies on victim/rapist relationships indicate that the rapist is as likely to be a man known to the victim as he is to be a stranger.[10]

Myth: Most rapes are committed by Black men against white women.

Reality: Most rapes involve a man and woman of the same race.

In addition to the majority of rapes being intraracial,[11] Black women appear to be the victims of rape four times as often as white women. [1 2] Again, these statistics are based on cases of reported rapes.

Myth: An imbalance in the sex ratio causes rape; legalizing prostitution would reduce rape.

Reality: Rape is primarily motivated by the man's "need" to control and humiliate a victim, not by his "sexual need."

The sex ratio theory states that men resort to rape because they are unable to secure legitimate sexual partners. It goes hand in hand with the theory that legalizing prostitution would decrease rape.

A variety of studies refute this myth. Three cities which allowed open prostitution experienced a decline in rape after prostitution was again prohibited. [13] Rapists include men who do not patronize prostitutes. Rapists include men who have "girlfriends," or are married, or living with women.[14] Statistical studies of reported rapes show that the majority of rapists are well below the age of males who most frequently use prostitutes. Finally, in Vietnam, brothels for the American military were officially sanctioned and incorporated into the base‑camp recreation areas and yet G.I. rape and sexual abuse of Vietnamese women and girls is one of the most atrocious chapters of violence in U.S. history.[15]

Myth: A woman cannot be raped by her husband.

Reality: Women can be and frequently are raped by their husbands.

Any act of forced sexual penetration is rape, regardless of the victim's relationship to the attacker. The law of "spousal immunity" is a direct result of the patriarchal concept of woman as "the property" of her husband.

By defining rape as not possible within marriage, the law implies that the marriage contract involves blanket consent to sexual relations at all times, and that a husband has a lawful right to copulate with his wife against her will. Women, married or single, have the constitutional right to freedom and selfdetermination, but some penal codes deny these rights to married women and women "living with" men.

Myth: Women enjoy being raped.

Reality: Rape is a brutal act of violence in which the victim is humiliated, degraded, psychologically terrorized and often threatened with death. [16] No rape victim‑woman, man or child‑enjoys rape.

The concept that women enjoy sexual violence at the hands of men is a male concept of female sexuality. Freud was the first to theorize that rape is something women desire and that women are masochistic by nature.

The majority of rape victims express a primary feeling of fear‑fear of physical injury, mutilation and death. They suffer a wide gamut of physical and emotional reactions. Rape severely disturbs the victim's normal lifestyle. Sleeplessness, nightmares, lack of appetite, fear of being alone, fear of leaving their homes, reliance on tranquilizers, physical soreness, broken ribs and internal injuries are some of the aftereffects following a rape.

The victimization of women

A renewed awareness of the social, economic arid political oppression of women occurred during the 1960's. This process took place largely thru women's consciousness‑raising groups which met informally in homes from Miami to Seattle in what was part of the larger Women's Movement. Consciousness‑raising is "the process of transforming the hidden, individual fears of women into a shared awareness of the meaning of them as social problems, the release of anger, anxiety, the struggle of proclaiming the painful and transforming it into the political . . .[17]

Women began to realize that the threat of rape and sexual molestation had restricted their entire lifestyles. Further, they discovered that their personal victimizations were not examples of isolated social problems but part of a consistent pattern. Many women had become so accustomed to sexual exploitation and abuse that they did not recognize themselves as victims of a crime.

On January 24, 1971 at the New York Radical Feminist Speak Out on Rape, in what was to precipitate the beginning of the rape prevention movement, women for the first time spoke publicly concerning acts of sexual violence against them. By 1972 rape crisis/prevention programs were functioning in numerous cities. Nationwide, consciousness‑raising groups, crisis hotlines, selfdefense courses, anti‑rape workshops, court watching and legislative action groups developed independently of one another. The purposes: to empower women and children so that they no longer could be victimized by rapists and police, medical and legal procedures; to educate the public on the issues of sexual assault and to precipitate fundamental changes in social institutions which either ignore, tolerate or implicitly encourage sexual exploitation of women and children.

Patriarchy

In order to understand the present practices of rape, sexual molestation, child and wife assault, it is essential to examine the historical and cultural context in which they occur. As with other modern cultures, the United States is patriarchal. It is a culture whose social organization is marked by the supremacy and domination of males over females:

However muted its present appearance may be, sexual dominion obtains nevertheless as perhaps the most pervasive ideology of our culture and provides its most fundamental concept of power. This is so because our society ... is a patriarchy. The fact is evident at once if one recalls that the military, industry, technology, universities, science, political office and finance‑in short, every avenue of power within the society, including the coercive force of the police, is entirely in male hands. As the essence of politics is power, such realization cannot fail to carry impact.

‑‑‑Kate Millett, Sexual Politics, pp. 24‑25

Historically, women in patriarchal societies have been property of the men: women were bought and. sold as merchandise‑‑concubines, slaves, prostitutes, wives.[18]

As the first permanent acquisition of man, his first piece of real property, woman was, in fact, the original building block, the cornerstone, of the "house of the father." Man's forcible extension of his boundaries to his mate and later to their offspring was the beginning of his concept of ownership. Concepts of hierarchy, slavery and private property flowed from, and could only be predicated upon the initial subjugation of women.

‑‑‑Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will, pp.17-18

Husbands had exclusive rights to a wife's sexual organs and to her children; they were part and parcel of his property.

Severe punishments were meted out to any man who tampered with these property rights, and in the case of infidelity the wife too was severely punished... a man could punish his wife by killing her or cutting off her nose, ears, or hair; and he could kill, emasculate, mutilate, or flog the man who invaded his rights of property. Thus with the full development of private property and the patriarchal family, women lost control over their lives, their destinies and over their own bodies. Wives were reduced to economic dependency upon their husbands for support .... As the noose of marriage tightened around the necks of women, they were corralled like cattle in the homes of their husbands, under their full domination.

‑Evelyn Reed, Woman's Evolution, p. 427

While in contemporary American society, the more blatant manifestations of patriarchal rule are less obvious, male supremacy and consent of the victims continues to be accomplished thru systems of punishment and reward, rigid sex role stereotyping and systematic, institutionalized physical and psychological force.

A variety of rewards and punishments, some subtle and some coercive, exist to socialize women into the "feminine," i.e., powerless, role. Women who do not conform to the accepted model are subject to a range of social punishments. These include ridicule, social ostracism, labeling and harassment, economic deprivation and in the extreme, incarceration in both mental asylums and prisons.

Sex‑role socialization

Sex‑role socialization, like sexual behavior, is learned behavior. In patriarchal societies a male learns that power, violence and aggression are linked with his sexuality. This is the stereotype of the "masculine" role. Victimization, powerlessness and submissiveness are stereotyped as the "feminine" role.

Sexualization programming in our society embraces the economic, the political and the cultural. Men and women learn what it means to be masculine and what it means to be feminine thru t.v., textbooks, toys, fairy tales, legends, radio, advertising, magazines, music, novels, movies, cartoons, comic books, laws, jobs, curricula and pornography, thru constant subtle communications from parents and peers and thru the political and economic realities of our everyday lives.

A primary source of gender stereotyping is the media. [19] Media objectification of the female body and eroticization of violence constantly repeat the view that women are sexual objects for male gratification and that domination of a woman by a man, especially sexually, is a "turn on."

Male aggression and male sexual pleasure are inextricably combined and reinforced, generation after generation, as the masculine norm. "Our society expects the male to be the aggressor in heterosexual relationships, and a certain amount of physical force and duress is consequently acceptable and perhaps even socially necessary." [20]

Mary Daly, feminist philosopher and theologian, and other feminist theorists have exposed the direct connections between male sexual violence, war, race hatred and genocide. Daly has described American patriarchal culture as one exhibiting the "Most Unholy Trinity" of rape, genocide, and war. [21] Rapism, the psychology and politics of domination, results in the objectification, abuse, and exploitation of all powerless people.

Wife assault

The same ideology of male domination and female inferiority present in the "psychology of rape" perpetuates and rationalizes the crime of wife assault in the home. Both rape and wife assault are traditionally thought of as "victim precipitated" that women somehow are "asking for it," in fact, may "deserve it."

As with rape, wife assault is a blatant example of a crime against women which previously was not acknowledged as a violent crime, despite the fact that millions of women are its victims. [22]

Frequently, when a wife who has been beaten does call in the police, it's as a last desperate remedy when she fears for her life. The response of the police is usually to treat such a situation as comic or trifling. There is rarely an arrest made or any encouragement for the wife to press charges. The police seem to identify with the husband, and treat him in a chiding but sympathetic manner.

‑Betsy Warrior, "Battered Lives," in Betsy Warrior and Lisa Leghorn, ed., House‑worker's Handbook (Cambridge, Massachusetts, Women's Center, 1974) pp. 27‑28

To get an idea of how large the problem of wife beating is, Sgt. Hubenette said about 100 police reports dealing with wife beating are written each week. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. That doesn't count the times the police are called to a domestic incident and the wife decides she doesn't really want to press charges. And that doesn't count the times a wife is beaten and the police are never called.

‑Nancy Livingston, "Wife Beating Looms as Major City Crime," St. Paul Sunday Pioneer Press, December 1, 1974

Wife assault is estimated to be one of the least reported crimes in the nation and it is probable that wives and children form "the largest single class of criminal victims in the United States." [23] The appalling lack of research on crimes against women and children is linked to the legal system's continual reinforcement of the idea that a man has the right to "discipline" his wife and children, with force if necessary. It is practically impossible for a wife to secure legal protection from a brutal husband."[24]

Altho the role of submissive victim is one which most girls are socialized into from the time of birth, many women and girls are now refusing to take part in their own victimizations. They are leaving brutal marriages and home situations and seeking help from other women. In England, France, Scotland, the Netherlands and the United States, women and girls are organizing harbor houses for the victims of wife assault, rape, and child beating; they are counselling and supporting each other."[25]

Rape & the criminal (in)justice systems

As with other categories of criminality, national statistics on reported rapes are merely a surface indication of the true rate of the crime. Only cases which fit the narrow legal and societal definitions of reported rape reach the F.B.I. U.C.R.s. Statutory rape cases, those in which the victim is under the legal age of consent, are not included. Rapes of wives by husbands, "date rapes," rapes of prostitutes and hitchhikers, and in many states, anal and oral rape and rape where the victim is male are not included.

Official estimates of rape generally range from five to ten times greater than the reported number; and some experts feel that only one in twenty sexual assaults is ever reported.[26] In 1968 the National Opinion Research Council victimization survey findings were used to conclude that over half a million women and children were victims of sexual assaults. [27]

The reasons for victim failure to report are many and varied. They may range from the more volatile feelings of fear and shame to the more practical feelings of futility. All, however, have a common theme in that they imply the absence of any personally compensatory reasons for reporting rape. Those victims who do choose to report cite only one compelling reason to do so--preventing the rapist from similarly assaulting other women and children.

The breakdown in our judicial services is more pronounced where sexual assault is concerned than for any other major crime of violence. [28] This is clearly seen in the incredibly low arrest, prosecution and conviction rate for rape. [29] Law enforcement officials point to the failure of victims to identify their assailant and the general lack of identifying witnesses at the rape scene as prime factors in the low apprehension rate. The inability of prosecutors to obtain convictions, however, is exceedingly more complicated.

Placing the victim on trial

About a year ago I had the misfortune to find out just what police treatment is like in cases of rape. I was raped by a total stranger who hid himself in my car .... Arapahoe County (police) handled the case. First they took me to Swedish Hospital to determine if I had been raped (which I was billed for later). Then they took me to the police building for questioning. They asked me to write out a statement about what happened and then‑The first question they asked .... "Was he Mexican?" Then, "Did you have an orgasm? Are you using birth control? Why are you using birth control? When did you start using it? Were you going with a guy at the time?" It seems to me that most of this is irrelevant to the fact of rape.

‑‑A Denver rape victim, quoted in June Bundy Csida and Joseph Csida, Rape, How to Avoid It and What to Do About It If You Can't (Chatsworth, California, Books for Better Living, 1974) pp. 97‑98.

Despite governmental responsibility to protect the rights of both the victims and accused, it is clear that the concern of the judicial centers on the rights of the accused in rape trials. The rights of the rape victim have largely been ignored. This is clearly seen in rules of evidence which place the victim's past sexual and personal history on trial more than the accused: a rape trial becomes a test of endurance for the woman. Her credibility as a witness is challenged while her private sex life is openly questioned.

For nearly 100 years our rape laws have required corroborative "proof" and certainty for prosecution which is unequaled in any other area of criminal law.[30] Today 39 states do not require ‑- by law ‑‑ corroborative evidence to establish a case of rape. However, none of these states fails to recite a litany of corroborative facts to support the victim's testimony. In reality, "the fact remains that proof of rape in most cases is sufficient only when the evidence is corroborated."[31] Some legal statutes have been altered but sexist and prejudicial attitudes forcing the rape victim to prove her own victimization and implying that women are not to be believed persist in law schools, courtrooms and society. [32]

... as defense counsel we are not burdened with a lot of the obligations that prosecutors have. We have free reign to do practically anything we want, as long as it's legal. We will impugn the integrity of witnesses when we really don't have any justification for impugning their integrity .... We can accuse victims of being promiscuous and highly immoral ladies, when in fact there is no justification for doing that. It's unfair, but our system builds unfairness. As a defense attorney, it's my job to exploit every opportunity for the defense of my client (the rapist). I'm not involved with the moral issues involved .... It's the image of our client and the image of the woman that goes into the mind of the jury that's important. It's not what the actual facts are ....

‑A defense attorney quoted in Csida and Csida, pp. 128‑29

Rape law reform

Steps are slowly being taken in recognition of the rights of victims. As a direct result of women's experience with the sexist and racist legal system, a drive for rape law reform was initiated by the women's movement in the early 1970's.

An excellent model statute [33] was proposed by the New York University Law School Clinical Program in Women's Legal Rights, one of the first such programs in the country. As part of the research for this statute, law students and their professors counselled rape victims. The resulting proposed law is neutral in that it treats rape like any other crime. It corrects seven of of the most flagrant injustices now inherent in most rape laws:

1. Eliminates the need for corroboration.
2. Eliminates the need for a rape victim to be physically injured to prove rape.
3. Eliminates the need to prove lack of consent.
4. Lowers the age of consent to 12 in most cases.
5. Eliminates as admissible evidence the victim's prior sexual activity or previous consensual sex with the defendant.
6. Eliminates the spousal exclusion in sexual offenses.
7. Defines rape in terms of degrees of serious injury.

Compensation

As restitution of the legal rights of rape victims is pursued from state to state, so is restitution for the physical and financial cost of the crime.

Since 1965 at least twelve states (Alaska, Illinois, California, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Washington) have enacted victim compensation acts. Unfortunately, the provisions of these statutes make them of little use to rape victims. This is due to failure to address nonphysical injuries and pregnancies, as well as discrimination on the basis of financial status of the victim and the type of expenses covered.

Where the defendant is acquitted, there is usually no way for the rape victim to gain compensation, tho she may have suffered long‑lasting physical or psychological injuries. Attacks by family members or lovers are usually excluded from compensatory legislation.

At present it appears unlikely that further development of victim compensation acts will benefit rape victims unless state criminal codes are revised and federal legislation enacted to fund state programs. Victim advocates should lobby for changes in the victim compensation laws which deny women the right to free and adequate medical care, legal advice and emotional counselling, the right to be compensated for loss of pay, lawyers' fees and other expenses incurred as a result of the sexual assault.

Restitution

Financial restitution by the victimizers is seldom made to rape victims. Successful civil suits against sex offenders are complex and rare.

One of the few awards on record recently went to a Maryland woman [34] whose attacker is presently serving time on multiple rape convictions. Unfortunately, the likelihood of the victim actually receiving the $350,000 judgment is slight.

More successful civil suits can usually be brought by complainants against the rapist's employers or the owners of the property on which the rape occurred. Charges of negligence against those individuals or companies apparently receive more favorable attention from the courts. In 1974‑1975, civil suits succeeded in Washington, Philadelphia, New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles.[35]

Few women have the strength to undergo the ordeal of court even once. Fewer yet choose to repeat the trauma. It is clear that victim restitution via civil suit at present is not an entirely viable option for the majority of victims.

Until victim restitution becomes a reality, however, society owes the victims of sexual assault humane and just treatment thru the delivery of quality services in the medical, mental health, and law enforcement fields. Rape is a social problem and recovery from rape is a social process that is best handled when shared and assisted by others. For community institutions this requires sensitivity to the trauma of the victim, as well as a recognition of victims' rights.

Racist use of the rape charge

A further area of cultural distortion which has served to impede justice to both the victim and accused are the racist and sexist myths surrounding interracial rape. Black and Third World women are regularly met with societal attitudes of "deserved victimization" and disbelief at every level of the criminal (in)justice systems. Men of the same groups have historically been victimized by the white racist use of the concept of "virtuous white womanhood."

A highly disproportionate number of Black males are convicted of sex offense, [36] and Black men are seven times as likely as white men to receive the maximum penalty when convicted.[37] Government statistics further show that since 1930, 89 percent of the 455 men executed for rape have been Black. Today 26 of the 35 men on death row for rape convictions are Black.[38]

In a 1973 survey, Brenda A. Brown, of the Memphis, Tennessee police department found that only 16 percent of reported rapes in Memphis were Black on white. Brown's findings are supported by independent studies in Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, Maryland.[39]

Despite this evidence to the contrary, the myths of interracial rape persist, adding fuel to racial tension and ensuring the continued inequities in the treatment of both victims and rapists by our criminal (in)justice systems.

Repeating the cycle of violence

Sexual assault of prisoners by guards and other prisoners has long been shrouded in secrecy and misinformation, but the jailing of political activists in the 1960's and the plight of women, like Joanne Little, who speak out, have now unlocked the door on what was once an "unmentionable" subject.

Bob Martin was raped 60 times during one weekend in a Washington, D.C. jail.

Ralph Gans was assaulted by 17 men during an inmates "political" riot. He was hospitalized for months.

Tico Gonzalez was raped by three guards in a city jail on Christmas Eve.

Harvey Masters was seven when he was sent to a home for unwanted boys and was jumped by four kids twice his age.

Over a dozen inmates sexually abused a hated prison guard during a well‑publicized prison uprising...

Prison rape becomes the ultimate shame. It destroys the spirit and symbolically serves as the demasculinization of the victim.

‑David Rothenberg, "Group Rip‑Off: The Prison Rape!" The Advocate, May 5, 1976

Public recognition of the epidemic proportions of sexual assault in prison, however, has not altered the situation and there are few statistics or studies on prison rape. The acting out of power roles in an authoritarian environment continues to thrive in keeping with punitive societal attitudes toward prisoners. [40] Sexual violence rampant in U.S. prisons and jails is inevitable. Sexual violence and abuse are the results of a violent and abusive system.

Empowering the victims of Rape

Rape is an assault on the victim's self‑determination, sexuality, and psyche. Following a rape, victims experience:[41]

• Fear of the attacker's return.
• Fear of being alone.
• Fear of being attacked again.
• Fear of venereal disease and pregnancy.
• Fear of relatives and friends finding out.
• Fear of reporting to police or hospitals.
• Fear of what may happen if she does report.
• Fear of returning to work or school.
• Fear of resuming relationships with men.
• Fear of simply walking down the street.

Until recently, victims of sexual assault had no place to go to receive sympathetic understanding, to find help in dealing with medical and legal institutions or to be educated on the issue of sexual assault and how to work toward its prevention. Hospitals, police and the courts for the most part exhibit sexist and racist biases, often further traumatizing the sexual assault victim. Nor are relatives and friends always supportive; they frequently react with horror and disapproval of the victim, blaming her for the attack. Indeed, it often appears that that the victim herself is placed on trial. Until recently, the rape victim suffered her indignities and injuries alone.

Rape crisis centers

This situation has changed dramatically as a result of the blossoming of the feminist movement. [42] During the early 70's the establishment and maintenance of rape crisis centers was undertaken solely by concerned women, usually under the auspices of feminist groups or women's centers. Most of the early anti‑rape workers were political activists, advocates or community organizers, and many were rape victims themselves. Today more than 200 rape crisis intervention programs are functioning primarily in urban and suburban areas.

The centers provide supportive services to victims of sexual assault while acting as buffers between victims and institutional sexist practices. Program activities include:

• Hotline counseling.
• Escort services to hospitals, police stations and courts.
• Educating the general public and professionals who deal with victims around the issues of rape.
• Reforming sexual assault laws.
• Educating and sensitizing mass media personnel so that they will provide realistic information on rape.
• Producing handbooks, flyers and other rape education literature.
• Developing model procedures for police, prosecutors, private doctors and hospitals.
• Providing self‑defense courses for women and children.
• Court watching at pretrial hearings and rape trials to support the victim and learn defense lawyers' tactics.
• Sensitizing institutions to the needs and rights of sexual assault victims.

Eliminating rape in a sexist society

The long range goal of anti‑rape work is to eliminate rape from our society. Ultimately, this can only be accomplished thru the eradication of patriarchy and its bastion, sexism. Fundamental changes must take place in values, customs, mores and political, economic and social institutions, if women are to be free from sexual violation and exploitation. Massive re‑educational campaigns are necessary to raise public consciousness.

The first step in changing public consciousness ties in the recognition of rape as a crime of violence. Rape prevention strategies must be related to changing social conditions which foster violence. The responsibility for changing violent attitudes and behavior should be acknowledged by all institutions which affect attitudes, knowledge and behavior--the home, schools and universities, media, social services, the legal system and governmental agencies.

Secondly, re‑education campaigns should be directed at potential rapists‑males socialized in a sexist culture‑and potential victims‑females socialized in sexist culture. Programs should be designed to reach discovered and undiscovered rapists, child sexual abusers, including fathers who sexually assault their children, voyeurs and exhibitionists. Concerted campaigns would focus on victims--reported and unreported‑children, adolescents and adults, and their families.

Grass‑roots organizing & professionalism

Rape prevention centers take a variety of forms and work from differing philosophies. Some are self‑supporting, grass‑roots feminist centers whose political beliefs and autonomy are essential to the services they provide. Other centers are organized and run by professionals within police departments, prosecutors' offices, hospitals, churches, mental health clinics and other established organizations. [43]

The struggle, at any level, against sexual violence, is scattered and inadequate. Anti‑rape groups, feminist or professional, barely scratch the surface in their attempts to bring aid to victims, change inhumane institutions and challenge and eradicate rape‑promoting sexism in education, media and elsewhere.

While all efforts are vitally needed, abolitionists particularly encourage rape crisis and prevention programs initiated and directed by the affected people. In the long range, programs designed by "professionals" tend to serve the interests of the criminal (in)justice systems rather than the interests of victims and potential victims. Such programs do not empower a movement which can become the vehicle for the massive re‑educational campaigns so urgently needed.

How to start a rape crisis center

The first step in organizing a rape crisis service [44] is to gather concerned women who are willing to donate time and energy to build this victim service.

Determine the needs of women in your community.

• Gather statistical data from local police, including the number of sexual assault cases reported during a particular time period, the number labeled "unfounded," those "not prosecutable" due to victim's relationship to the attacker (some grand juries will refuse to indict if the woman was a prostitute or was hitchhiking, or if she was attacked by her boyfriend), those cleared by arrest, those ending in conviction. Also check categories of assault, burglary, breaking and entering and homicide and ask the police or prosecutor's office how many cases involved rape. If the police have incomplete statistics, prosecutors are often able to supply them.
• Check to see if your city was one studied in the HEW‑LEAA survey, "Non‑Reported Crime in High Impact Crime Cities."[45]
• Check hospital emergency room records via the administrator, if possible, to determine the number of sexual assault victims treated.
• It is imperative to know how rape victims are treated by police and medical personnel so that you can offer realistic information to the victim, who must decide whether or not to report the crime. In addition, statistics are necessary in order to demonstrate to the community the need for a crisis center and, to potential volunteers, the need for their services.
• Conduct victim surveys in your community via women's newsletters, the YWCA, Church Women United, League of Women Voters, NOW, local papers, radio and t.v. Attempt to reach doctors, nurses, psychiatrists, mental health workers, welfare workers, teachers, guidance counselors, hot‑line volunteers, youth workers and others who can distribute survey questionnaires to victims and their families. Keep in mind that the victim must contact you. Stress that all information is confidential. Ask only basic questions: Did the victim report the assault? If she did, what was her experience? If she did not, why not? What recommendations might she have for police and hospital procedures?
• Determine what services, if any, are already available to victims from local public and social service agencies. Do any agencies provide hot‑line counseling? Escort services? Follow‑up counseling? Walk‑in emergency counseling?
• Investigate community institutional procedures. Become knowledgeable on the medical and psychological needs of sexual assault victims -- adults, adolescents and children: Do local hospital procedures meet victims' needs? Are doctors, nurses, social workers and hot‑line counselors aware of and meeting victims' needs? To what extent are sex, race and class biases preventing the hospital and police experience from being positive and supportive to the victim? Are there in your community any alternatives to public institutions, such as free clinics, women's health centers?
• Establish contacts in hospitals, mental health agencies, police stations and prosecutor's offices: know who your allies are.
• Be aware that police, hospitals and mental health agencies may be defensive or even hostile to your questions, since they are allegedly offering the victims this supportive service. Know how to interview: ask the interviewee for her or his point of view. Attempt to make allies and at the same time find out what and how much education is needed.
• Services to victims should he open to every victim of sexual assault, whether or not she has reported the crime. Services to rapists, child sexual abusers, exhibitionists and voyeurs, should be open to all, whether or not he has been reported, apprehended or processed thru the criminal (in)justice systems.

Set short and long range goals for the rape crisis center and be realistic about them.

The hot‑line is the life‑line. Almost all centers provide one very basic and crucial service‑‑a telephone counseling hot‑line staffed by volunteers who provide empathy and information for callers. Information is given on post‑rape emotional, medical and legal needs of victims. Hot‑lines are generally staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week where possible. In some communities without the facilities for a crisis center or treatment program, the hot‑line service may be the only resource available to victims.

Full service crisis centers might include: Telephone crisis counseling. Peer group counseling for victims. Family counseling. Legal services for victims. Temporary shelter for victims who live alone. Personal counselors to go to victim's home.

An empowerment model: BAWAR

• In 1970 a 13‑year‑oldBerkeley girl was raped at school. For nearly six hours, while she was questioned by school authorities and police and medically examined at a hospital, she was prevented from seeing her parents. Following this incident, the girl's mother and some friends met to discuss their anger. In November 1971, these women organized BAWAR, Bay Area Women Against Rape.[46]
• BAWAR emphasizes the political and ideological aspects of rape. Says one woman: "We discuss the definition of rape and oppression to prepare women for the phones and other BAWAR activities. Our training is done by women in the group. We do not support 'professional' approaches to dealing with rape."[47] BAWAR offers the victim a perspective on ways to gain power over her own life and challenge old myths which function to encourage her guilt feelings and fear.
• BAWAR alerts potential victims by posting "street sheets" with a description of known rapists, their auto license numbers and modes of operation.
• BAWAR brought police, emergency room personnel and district attorneys together for the first time to discuss ways each agency could function for the benefit of the victim and her court case. Rape counselors now regularly train new police recruits and hospital personnel to sensitize them to the needs of rape victims.

Other rape crisis centers

Washington, D.C. Rape Crisis Center emphasizes community education and rape prevention above individual crisis counseling, hoping to reach potential victims before they are raped. Women speak to community groups, junior high, high school and college students and women at their workplace, stressing rape and woman's position in society, rape prevention, self‑defense and how to deal with institutions if you are raped. Upon request from the D.C. School System, the center prepared a seventh grade curriculum unit which is used by the public schools for health and safety classes. The center does not advise a woman whether or not to report her rape. Rather, counselors attempt to offer realistic information on police and court treatment of rape victims in their area and to encourage the victim to make her own decision.

Women Organized Against Rape (WOAR) has been serving Philadelphia women since May 1973.[48] This unique volunteer crisis program has its headquarters in Philadelphia General Hospital (PGH). Noting that most hot‑lines and crisis centers reach mostly middle class and movement women, WOAR determined to make services available to poor and Third World women.

In Philadelphia all rape victims who report the crime are taken to PGH. When a victim is brought to the hospital, WOAR is immediately notified and a counselor (available 24 hours) joins her to give whatever help is needed. The WOAR women are thus in the unprecedented position of being able to reach all women in Philadelphia who report their rapes. In the event (rare, as elsewhere) that the rapist is caught, charged and brought to trial, WOAR women provide emotional support and factual information to the victim in preparation for the court proceedings and accompany her to the trial. The presence of a large body of women in the courtroom serves notice on the predominantly male lawyers, judges and jurors that the rape victim is not alone and not afraid.

Rape Relief in Seattle offers the victim the opportunity to anonymously report the violence against her. A flyer circulated by the Rape Reduction Project states: "Rape Relief ... can take information about the circumstance of the rape by phone or in person. We give the information to the police department, so that they may learn more about trends, locations and methods of rape‑information that we believe will ultimately lead to a reduction in rape. The victim need not even tell us her name, so there will be no way she can become involved with the police or court unless she wants to. Third party reporting is one way to turn an ugly situation into something that can help other women."

A number of Superior Court judges have demanded that convicted rapists make contributions to Rape Relief along with their prison sentences. Judge Donald Horowitz says he regularly sentences individuals to make contributions rather than fining them and letting the money go to the "anonymous state." In the rape cases, he felt the crimes were "political acts against women and a product of institutionalized sexism." He suggested that the contributions would serve to "raise the rapists' consciousness." [4 9]

Innovative action projects

• Women from NashvilleRape Prevention arid Crisis Center made a survey of pornography sold in local bookstores. They found that 80 percent of the subject matter represented some form of violence against women: rape, sadism or murder. They use the results of their survey in speaking engagements to show how violence against women is encouraged in society, holding special lectures right in the pornography bookstores.[50]
• A group of about 70community and Rutgers University women marched at night thru New Brunswick, New Jersey, chanting slogans and carrying banners proclaiming their right for safety in the streets.[51]
• Santa Cruz WAR publishes a monthly "descriptions list," including all available information of men who have recently been reported as rapists and other men who harass women‑names, addresses, licenses and details of incidents. Women in New York, thru Majority Report, and women in Los Angeles, thru Sister, also publish descriptions and modes of operation of rapists. [52]
• The Campaign Against Street Harassment in New York City distributes to women a form letter threatening boycott to be sent to businesses whose employees "call after women, whistle, make obscene signs and sounds, or verbally annoy, abuse and patronize women passersby."[53]
• Because a man is most likely to hassle or attack a woman alone, Detroit WAR organized groups of four to eight women to patrol the streets, escort women who are alone to their destinations, watch for men behaving suspiciously, and intervene in situations of violence against women. [54]

They perform street theatre exposing myths about rape and rapists and portraying violence against women in the street, home and courtroom. They picket movies which portray rape as "entertainment," a "joke," a "turn on" for men or women.

Men against rape

As a result of this newly emerging consciousness, a small but growing number of men's anti‑rape groups have been formed.[56] These men believe that rape is not a "women's problem" but a community problem and one for which men must take responsibility. Many of the activities of these groups have been undertaken jointly with women's anti‑rape groups.

New responses to the sexually violent

As abolitionists, we are confronted with the struggle between two conflicting forces for change. We are in total agreement with feminist anti‑rape workers and other social changers that every effort should be made to apprehend and confront the sexually violent. We share the feelings of outrage experienced by rape victims; we believe that repetitive rapists must be restrained from committing further acts of violence. On the other hand, we do not support the response of imprisonment. We challenge the basic assumptions that punishment, harsh sentences and retributive attitudes will serve to lessen victims' pain, re‑educate rapists or genuinely protect society.

As rape is given more publicity, more money and energy is spent prosecuting and convicting rapists. How is this after‑the‑fact action helping us as women? The rape rate appears to be increasing. In fact, if all men who had ever raped were incarcerated tomorrow, rape would continue outside as well as inside prisons. Incarceration does not change the societal attitudes which promote rape. In a society that deals with symptoms rather than causes of problems, prisons make perfect sense. Confronting the causes of rape would threaten the basic structure of society....

... prison is vindictive--it is not concerned with change but with punishment. And its real social function is similar to that of rape‑it acts as a buffer, as an oppressive institution where a few scapegoats pay for the ills of society.

‑Jackie MacMillan and Freada Klein, editorial, Feminist Alliance Against Rape Newsletter, September/October 1974

• The criminal (in)justice systems convict primarily poor, Black and Third World men for a crime that is committed by men of every race, class and social status. Thus, prisons are reserved for and used as weapons of control against the less powerful. The white, middle class rapist will rarely be caught in this selective process.
• When a sexually violent male is placed in a prison population he continues his aggressive actions inside the walls. This time his victims are younger, more vulnerable males. If the rapist is smaller, lighter of weight or younger than the general population, he himself can become the rape victim.[57]
• Newly emerging data indicate that a majority of imprisoned rapists were sexually assaulted as children and adolescents.[58] Prisons provide the opportunity to repeat the cycle of violence.
• When the sexually violent male is caught, convicted and imprisoned, he is on the street again in an average of 44 months.[59] In prison he has been dominated, degraded, humiliated and possibly sexually assaulted himself; his keepers have taken control of his body and his life. Upon return to society, he may channel his anger toward the most vulnerable, available victim: any woman.
• Approximately 40states have no type of sex offender programs of any kind, in or out of prisons. This is a reflection of the lack of seriousness with which sexual violence against women is regarded.
• Sex offender programs in prisons and mental hospitals are mainly controlled by men and rarely challenge the basic cultural causes of sexual violence. Rather, they often foster sexist biases, offering the sex offender further rationales for his violence against women. [60]

Breaking the cycle of violence

Not all sex offenders must be restrained during their re‑education/resocialization process. Current alternatives to prison are proving this point and providing needed models. But many more community programs for sex offenders must be developed before belief in non-incarcerative alternatives is accepted.

For those sexual violents who do require temporary separation from society‑repetitive rapists, those who physically brutalize or psychologically terrorize and men who repeatedly sexually assault children‑places of restraint are needed while reeducation occurs. Unless these alternatives are developed, there may be no other choice but the prison or the asylum. Hence the urgency for abolitionists to create programs similar to those we shall cite.

Unfortunately, some worthy programs for sex offenders continue to use the language of the "medical model." For instance, re‑education and resocialization processes are often referred to as "treatment." Despite the language orientation, these programs are consistent with abolitionist beliefs. Essentially they are rooted in the concept that sexual behavior and relationships are learned thru the process of socialization, and that new behavior patterns can be acquired. Responsibility rests with the individual to overcome cultural and social conditioning in sexual violence until those causal factors are changed.

Alternative House

Until recently, convicted sex offenders were routinely punished by incarceration in prisons or mental institutions. In almost every state no other options were available to sentencing judges.

A small community‑based center for sex offenders was established in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1972, a project of Bernalillo County Mental Health Center, part of the University of New Mexico School of Medicine.

As a preliminary step, the cooperation of 12 District Court judges had been solicited. These judges agreed on the difficulty in determining prison sentences for such crimes and expressed interest in alternatives to incarceration. A community program was designed to serve rapists, sexual abusers, incest offenders, exhibitionists and voyeurs.

First called Positive Approaches to Sex Offenders (PASO), the name was later changed to Sex Offender Program at Alternative House, Inc.[61] It is open to all sexual aggressives and potential aggressives, whether or not they've been discovered, reported, apprehended, tried or convicted of a sex crime. It also offers services to the victims of sex offenses as well as the families of both victims and offenders.

Clients. About 70 percent of the sex offenders in the program are referred by the police, the probation department, the public defender's office, district court judges or the parole department. The next largest referral source is attorneys representing men arrested on sex crime charges.

When the program was initiated, it primarily served "nonaggressive" offenders such as exhibitionists, voyeurs and child sexual abusers who did not use physical violence against the child. However, as the staff gained experience and the program gained credibility, offenders who had engaged in rape, sodomy and sexual assault were channelled into Alternative House thru the parole board as a condition of release. By 1975, three‑quarters of the clients were classified as "aggressive," tho classification is somewhat arbitrary and some of the staff question the labeling process. About 100 clients are served each year.

Alternative House has attempted to work with everyone referred, at least for an initial evaluation. About ten percent of those referred are turned down as not amenable to treatment in the community‑based program. Judgment of the relative dangerousness of an individual is extremely difficult and perhaps impossible to determine. After consultation and testing, Wally Crowe, Alternative House Coordinator, makes the final decision on acceptability of clients.

Services. After initial evaluation, the next step is to draw up a contract, either verbally or in writing. This contract sets forth the type of services to be provided, required participation by the client, a time‑line for implementation of specific services and the conditions under which the contract may be voided by either party. The contract is open-ended in that by mutual agreement the services may be changed or time limits altered.

Staff members devote a quarter of their time to diagnostic/evaluative procedures. These are conducted on about half of all sex offender referrals, primarily as pre‑sentence evaluations or reports for probation or parole boards.

The majority of the staff's time is devoted to therapy, both individual and group. About 80 percent of sex offender clients receive individual therapy. Half receive both individual and group therapy. One‑third receive additional family or marital counseling, which is strongly encouraged when the family remains together.

The thrust of the counseling with nonaggressive offenders lies in getting them to examine their sexual and social roles. Group focus is generally in the area of sexist stereotypes and assumptions. Relating more fully and more openly to both women and men is encouraged, as well as asking them to empathize with victim reactions.

The majority of nonaggressive clients during the past two years have responded positively to therapy. Approximately 85 percent leave the program with what staff considers "improved life styles." Unfortunately, due to lack of funding, Alternative House does not have sufficient staff to conduct systematic supportive follow‑up of men who leave the program,[62] but clients are urged to continue to use the program as long as they need.

Since the program started, three clients have been charged with rape. However, one of the men had spent five and another 13 years in prison before coming to Alternative House. Community reaction to these charges is hard to determine, but the program did not receive negative press as a result of these incidents.[63]

Contradictions. As with most crimes, rape and other sex offenses are committed by men of all races, from all walks of life‑rich men and poor men, well educated and illiterate. Yet those who are prosecuted for these offenses tend to be on the poor, non‑white, poorly educated end of the spectrum. Since Alternative House is funded as an offender program, it offers services primarily to those channeled thru the criminal (in)justice systems. For this reason, the community‑based program can only focus on a highly select group of sex offenders. The clients are disproportionately Spanish‑American.

Thus, such programs cannot have strong impact on the problem of sex offenses until ways are found to include the full range of persons needing their services. The overwhelming majority of sex offenders, white or Black, middle class or poor, college professor or teenage drop‑out, will not easily admit they have a "problem" or that the "problem" is a brutal crime.

Despite this inherent limitation, as a community‑based service to sex offenders, Alternative House is unprecedented in that it avoids the violent (non)solution of caging.

Prisoner self‑help: PAR

Prisoners Against Rape, Inc. is a prison based anti‑rape program. It was founded by two prisoners at Lorton Correctional Complex, Virginia in September 1973.[64] The group is composed of prisoners at Lorton and Occoquan, Virginia and the Washington, D. C. jail (some of whom are ex‑sex offenders), feminists from anti‑rape groups and other interested community members.

The first year of PAR was devoted to consciousness‑raising by the imprisoned members. They dealt with their motivations for raping, the politics of rape, attitudes toward women and sexuality and myths and realities of rape. They believe that prisons don't prevent rape; at best they simply forestall heterosexual rape while fostering homosexual rape and enhancing existing perversions.

From the beginning PAR has functioned as a self‑help group without support of the prison authorities. Today it is a nonprofit corporation existing solely on donations and fund raising.

Objectives. To develop an analysis of the causes of rape. To re‑educate the sexually violent with the goal of eliminating rape. To function as a re‑education program within prisons, exchanging information and working with anticrime and feminist groups, rape crisis centers and sex offender programs in other prisons.

Activities. Weekly consciousness‑raising sessions are held for interested prisoners. Collectively taught classes open to the public are held Friday nights at Lorton Prison. With the D.C. Rape Crisis Center, PAR worked on a curriculum for junior high and high school rape education seminars.

Sex Offenders Anonymous

In 1971, Richard Bryan, a former compulsive exhibitionist, and Rosemary Bryan, his wife, began to meet with other former sex offenders and founded a unique self‑help nonprofit group in Los Angeles called Sex Offenders Anonymous, SOANON.[65]

Our aim is to shut off the modus operandi of the sex offenders. We make sure they aren't left alone all day seven days a week. It's like baby‑sitting. If a man has a wife or girl friend, she has to do the watching, but if it's a single guy the other members do it. We have a permanent crisis line to organization headquarters. If a single member calls and says he is ready to go out and commit a crime, we go over to stop him.

‑Richard Bryan, quoted in Gager and Schurr, p. 253

SOANON weekly meetings are similar to those of Alcoholics Anonymous. Sex offenders' wives and women friends are encouraged to attend. The group has won court approval to work with sex offenders ranging from rapists to voyeurs. Of the approximately 50 members, the majority are referred from the criminal (in)justice systems, either as a condition of probation or parole.

Sexuality re‑education: BEAD

BEAD‑Behavioral, Emotional and Attitudinal Development‑program was established in 1974 at the Minnesota Security Hospital. This trial program involves two 15‑man groups of sex offenders. Crimes they have been convicted of range from aggravated rape to seduction of children.[66] In addition to group therapy and individual counseling, this program consists of two innovative reeducational projects: a comprehensive sex education program and a tape‑exchange program with victims of rape.

All the men participate in sex education classes with an equal number of young women and men from the community. Starting with an information‑giving approach to sexuality, the eight‑week course stresses understanding and appreciating various behaviors, feelings and attitudes. Interpersonal affectionate relationships, the distinction between fantasy and action and the mutual responsibility sex partners have toward one another are examined.

Rape tapes. Four sessions focus on tape recorded discussions between BEAD participants and rape victims in Minneapolis. The tapes deal with victim topics: How do I feel personally about my rape experience? What experience did I have to go thru because of the rape? How did I feel about my contacts with police, hospital, attorneys, court, family, friends? Is the act of rape motivated by sexual desire or anger? Is it mainly sexual or aggressive? Is rape an act against the victim, against women generally, against society or what? What motivates a man to rape?

After listening to victims discuss these topics, BEAD participants discuss their ideas on the subject. These discussions are taped for the victims who then tape their response and so on.

Treatment Program for Sex Offenders

Ten years ago Dr. Geraldine Boozer, clinical psychologist at South Florida State Hospital in Hollywood, Florida designed an innovative program for sex offenders.[67] The Treatment Program for Sex Offenders was developed in the belief that it is implausible to resocialize sex offenders when they are housed with "mental patients" and in an institution. Exhibitionists, voyeurs, child sexual abusers, men who have raped their daughters and multiple rapists are jumbled together with other "mental patients," both violent and unviolent, incarcerated for a variety of "problems." For the most part patients were warehoused and inappropriately drugged. Initially there was much resistance to the program by the administration, but in 1971 Dr. Boozer finally obtained separate physical facilities for the program, which now involves 30 men. She believes that the vast majority of sex offenders are not psychotic. Emotional difficulties experienced earlier in life manifest themselves in sexually deviant behavior.

Objectives. To serve as an alternative to prisons for apprehended sex offenders and as a community service to those willing to volunteer. To resocialize participants by increasing each man's sense of self‑worth and self‑esteem by putting him in touch with the extent of the effect he has had on his victims and himself and by teaching positive social skills and techniques.

Program. Self‑help. No drugs, no guards, no bars. A 24 hour a day, seven day a week, intensive self‑operating group behavior modification therapy effort in which sex offenders work together, go to school together, counsel together and live together in a controlled therapeutic community. Minimum residence: two years.

This program is based on behavior modification learning theory and research. The basic assumption is that sexual deviations are learned behaviors. A change in social influences can result in changing behavior which is culturally developed. Sexual violence and aggression are viewed as habit‑forming, similar to drug addiction.

Dr. Boozer believes that chemotherapy and aversive conditioning, such as imprisonment, reinforce the sex offender's avoidance patterns rather than producing an actual change in behavior. Thus they tend to increase the sex offender's problems. Her program stresses positive reinforcement.

Participants in the program include rapists, child molesters, men who have sexually assaulted their children, voyeurs and exhibitionists. Altho Dr. Boozer is hesitant to generalize about these men, she cites a few similarities: They are loners, unable to relate to other adults, especially women, in a socially acceptable manner. Most of them fear women and use forced sexual contact to hurt and degrade them. They also generally fear authority figures. They see sex not as an end but as a means to relieve feelings of frustration, anger and hostility.

From the outset the sex offenders helped develop their own program. They established guidelines, taking into account their own needs as well as the needs of others, with little guidance from staff. External security is minimal: The men police themselves, maintaining an around the clock "fire watch" to prevent escapes. Outside of regular hospital rules, participants vote on rules and settle infractions within their own ward government apparatus. Dr. Boozer's only rules are "no violence and strict confidentiality."

Evaluation. Abolitionists may challenge Dr. Boozer's reliance on a medical model with all the psychological trappings of individualized treatment administered within the confines of a mental institution. Despite this, the program has many praiseworthy aspects: It serves as an alternative to prison caging. It is based on recognition that sexually aggressive behavior is socially and culturally learned. It seeks to re‑educate and resocialize sex offenders, it is based on the concept of self‑help. Rape victims and feminist anti‑rape workers from the community take part in "rap" sessions. Additional community self‑help programs have been generated by former residents.

New responses to sexual abuse of children

Information on the incidence of sexual abuse of children is almost nonexistant. The F.B.I. Annual U.C.R.s flow over with data about auto theft and larceny, but carry no breakdown of the total incidence of all crimes against children. "What makes an assessment more difficult is the fact that, except for the rare case or the particularly brutal attack, or the fatal situation, cases of sex offenses against children are not generally publicized by the press."[68]

A sexual assault on a child constitutes a gross and devastating shock and insult sexual offenses are barely noticed except in the most violent and sensational instances. Most sex offenses are never revealed; when revealed, most are either ignored or not reported; if reported, a larger percentage are dismissed for lack of proof, and when proof is established many are dropped because of the pressure and humiliation forced on the victim and family by the authorities.

‑Florence Rush, "The Sexual Abuse of Children: A Feminist Point of View," in Rape: The First Source book for Women, p. 70

Figures that are available, coupled with reports from women who are now beginning to speak out about childhood sexual victimizations, indicate that "the national annual occurrence of these crimes must reach an alarmingly large and unbelievable figure."[69]

Dr. Vincent De Francis, Director of the Children's Division of the American Humane Association, estimates that some 100,000 children are sexually abused each year.[70] Sociology professor Dr. John H. Gagnon, formerly of the Institute of Sex Research, calculated that as many as half a million girls are sexually victimized every year.[71]

A conservative estimate of the New York City incidence is approximately 3,000 cases per year.[72]

Myths of sexual abuse of children

In addition to the paucity of statistical data, there is little research and analysis of the circumstances, nature and after‑effects of child sexual assault and rape. Where studies do exist they almost inevitably perpetuate myths [73] similar to those condoning and rationalizing rape of adult women. These myths imply that:

• Sexual assault of a child is akin to a "sexual relationship" with a child.
• Men who sexually abusechildren do so because they are sexually deprived; they are basically nonthreatening males who prefer children as sexual partners or who "can't find" an adult partner.
• Female children often"act out" their sexuality by "seducing" an older male (a myth which places the onus of guilt on the child).
• Early sexual victimization usually has no long‑lasting physical or psychological effects on the child.

Child victimization study

A sample group of 263 cases in Brooklyn, N. Y. were studied by the American Humane Association.[74] Major findings include:

• Sexual abuse of children by adults knows no economic, social or racial boundaries. Middle class families, however, are usually shielded from the probings of social services agencies. They do not often appear in statistics.
• 60 percent of thechild victims studied were coerced by direct force or threat of bodily harm. In 25 percent the lure was based on the child's natural loyalty and affection for a friend or relative. 15 percent were based on tangible lures.
• In 41 percent of the cases the offenses were repeated, and were perpetrated over periods of time ranging from weeks to as long as seven years.
• 97 percent of abusers were males. They ranged in age from 17 to 68. They tended to victimize children of their own race.
• In 75 percent of thecases the abuser was known to the child and/or to the child's family: 27 percent of abusers were members of the child's own household--a father, stepfather or mother's lover. 11 percent were related to the child by blood or marriage, but did not live in the child's household. 25 percent were strangers. Other abusers were friends or acquaintances.
• Victims ranged from infants to age 15. The median age was 11. Victims were on a ratio of ten girls to one boy.
• Two‑thirds of the child victims were found to be emotionally damaged by the occurrence, with 14 percent severely disturbed. 29 of the 263 victims became pregnant as a result of the offense.
• The criminal code, which defines sexual abuse of children as a crime, is intended to act as a deterrent to the commission of such crimes by punishing violators. It is not its purpose or intent to protect the child victim from the consequences of such crimes.

Can a child consent?

The issue of age of consent is an extremely difficult one. Consent should be an issue only when a child repeatedly denies that s/he has been sexually abused. Even in such cases, children may be attempting to protect a family member or avoid further humiliation or parental anger.

Children, teenagers and adults are all sexual beings and should have the right to express their sexuality as they do other facets of their personalities. It is possible, tho probably rare‑based on evidence of studies of child sexual abuse‑for a child to have a pleasurable, noncoercive, nonpressured sexual experience with a teenager or adult. Most children under 11 or 12 are not emotionally or intellectually equipped to make a decision to consent to a sexual relationship with an adult, stranger or family member.

Children generally are not educated about their own or adult sexuality. Neither are they provided with information on pregnancy, birth control, venereal disease, abortion, sexual arousal, homosexuality, heterosexuality, bisexuality, or their right to refuse advances from authority figures and their right to speak out against sexual abuse.

Fathers, brothers, uncles and grandfathers generally hold a position of power within the family. To many children within our patriarchal culture, such male authority appears absolute. In fact, father‑rule, the taboo against interference with paternal authority, probably predates the incest taboo.[75]

Training in fear & silence

. . . (Child rape) is not, by any means, the only unacceptable household condition (apparent in incest families). Chronic brutality and alcoholism are the two most frequently cited complaints (from mothers and daughters). The home is portrayed as an abode of constant fear and friction All of the children in these families claimed to have submitted to the fathers' sexual demands either because of personal threats to them or fear of future violence. In the words of a twelve year old victim: "He is twice as big as I am ... I can't fight with him. I've seen him beat the hell out of my mother who's as big as he is! Why won't he beat the hell out of me?"

‑Yvonne M. Tormes Child Victims of Incest, a pamphlet produced by the Children's Division of The American Humane Association

In order to promote sexual self‑determination and to combat the "training in silence and fear, we advocate the following rights for children:

• Right to information about sex and sexuality‑birth control, reproduction, pregnancy. venereal disease, sex roles, homosexuality, heterosexuality and bisexuality.
• Right to nonsexist child-rearing and education.
• Right to freedom from sexual exploitation and sexual abuse by adults, adolescents and other children.[76]

Few girls reach adulthood without being sexually victimized‑and taught to tolerate it. These childhood molestations vary according to place, amount of force used and relation of the victim to the attacker. They include the "depantsing" rituals of young boys who attack a girl; the hostile attacks by men of all ages who corner children in movie theaters, parks and subways, selecting one victim after another; the more violent assaults of oral, anal and vaginal rape; the unwanted irritating and humiliating touching and fondling heaped on children by strangers, friends of the family, acquaintances, schoolmates, relatives.

Child Sexual Abuse Treatment Program

A constructive community service program in San Jose, California responds to the needs of both child sexual abusers and the abused. It operates as a unit of the Juvenile Probation Department and in close coordination with other law enforcement and human service agencies. Program objectives include:

• Providing immediate counseling and practical assistance to sexually abused children, their abusers and the families of both. In particular, to victims of intrafamily sexual molestation. Some cases involve only fondling, but the majority include rape.
• Coordinating all official services responsible for the sexually abused child and family, as well as private resources.
• Encouraging expansionand autonomy of self‑help groups for child victims and their families.
• Training in co‑counseling,self‑management, intrafarnily communication and in locating community resources (medical, legal, financial, educational, vocational).

Self‑management. This program is unique in that it is the only substantive attempt to apply the principles and methods of humanistic psychology to a serious psycho‑social problem. CSATP employs a model that fosters self‑managed growth of individuals rather than a medical model. Therapy includes individual counseling for the child, mother and father; mother/daughter counseling; marital counseling. which becomes key if the family wishes to be reunited; father/daughter counseling; family counseling and group counseling.

• The therapeutic approach includes procedures designed to alleviate the emotional stresses of the experience and the resulting punitive actions of the community.
• The program stresses that by punishing the abuser in the dehumanizing setting of the prison or other institution, the low self‑concept/high destructive energy syndrome is reinforced. No recidivism has been reported in the more than 250 families receiving ten hours of treatment or more.
• Other benefits of this program include: Children are returned to their families sooner‑90 percent within the first month. Self‑abusive behavior by the children, usually amplified after an abusive situation, has been reduced both in intensity and in duration. About 90 percent of the marriages have been saved; many clients confide that their relationships are better than they were before the crisis.
• Increasing recognition by judges of the effectiveness of this program is leading to its use as an alternative to imprisonment.
• Two voluntary groups within the community have been founded as spin‑offs of this program. Parents United was formed by three mothers in 1972 for mutual support. A parallel group, Daughters United, composed of girls 9 to 18 who have been sexually molested by their fathers or stepfathers, also meets weekly.

Recommendations for action

• Formation of child-advocacy centers to provide all children with an outside‑the‑family protective authority mechanism. This service should provide: a harbor house for physically and sexually abused children; an adult health‑care advocate who visits each family with children regularly to provide at‑home medical services and to detect incidence of child abuse, as is presently one aspect of Scotland's socialized medical care plan; special advocate‑counselors for children [77] who have been sexually assaulted, and particularly for those whose cases are processed thru the criminal (in)justice systems and educational information in schools, churches, YWCA's, etc. describing the advocacy services so children know where they can go for safety.
• Implement and promote the use of nonsexist, nonviolent educational tools into school curricula:[79] sexual and interpersonal assertiveness training,[80] sex and sexuality education, verbal and physical self‑defense, consciousness‑raising about myths and realities of sexual assault and rape.[81]
• "Caution must also be taught to children in a violent society, especially since children are naturally less wary of strangers than adults and lack experience and judgment. To instill awareness of potential dangers without terrifying or overly alarming the child should be the aim of every parent and others charged with child guidance ignorance of the reality of rape is as harmful as too many warnings .... Children should be taught caution, not fear." [82]
• Establish child sex abuser re‑educationprograms in the community, in prisons and in mental institutions. Promote the use of community programs and the gradual phase‑out of institutionalization as a response to the sexually violent.
• Establish hot‑linesfor all sexual assaulters, including child sexual abusers.
• Form community action groups to campaign against the sexual exploitation of women and children in pornographic films and literature and the use of children as prostitutes.[83]

Street crimes

Street crime has been officially identified as the major crime problem in the United States. For victims and residents in areas plagued by purse snatchings, muggings and robberies, street crime is a fearsome problem: the anxieties it produces are real and legitimate. Nonetheless, with the influence of the media, fear has been raised to a frenzied pitch. The fear of street crime threatens to destroy basic human freedoms‑including the freedom from fear itself. Office seekers exploit fear as a political issue without dealing with the economic and social conditions which spawn crime in the streets. And with the bulk of governmental crime control resources directed against the perpetrators of street crimes, citizens are programmed into believing that more military hardware and firepower, longer prison sentences and "law and order" rhetoric somehow offer them protection.

Constant bombardment by the media's portrayal of crime and criminals must not mesmerize us into forgetting that the overall crime picture reflects public problems requiring structural change and collective social solutions, not military maneuvers. The "war on crime," a relatively new term, reflects the military perspective of the law enforcement apparatus and the "weapons" and strategies they employ.[84] The war problem and the crime problem exhibit striking similarities:

In each case, strong social sentiments develop to support differentiation between the wrongdoers and the wronged. . a conception ... of the "good guys" and the "bad guys." In the case of war, as in the case of crime, it is widely believed that high values will be served by rendering the "enemy" his due. And, correspondingly, there is widespread distrust of any "soft" policies that seem to imply concessions to, or appeasement of, the "other side." In each case, the very process of defining enemies seems to serve some important functions ‑psychological, social, or even economic--for the society confronting such wrongdoers.

‑Edwin M. Schur, Our Criminal Society, pp. 1‑2

On some levels the war on crime can be viewed as a substitute for the struggle against internal communism during the 1950's. The same forces and interests in our society are ready to "do battle" with groups seen as "the enemy in our midst."

If ever there is a heavy reduction in the expenditure on national armaments and the threat of external forces loses some power to persuade the public, it may be that this threat will be replaced by amplification of the threat of internal conflict .... It is not possible to make war on events, and crimes are events. It is possible to make wars on criminal or on "criminal classes" because criminals are persons. Further, criminals are a particular class of persons with whom no one would willingly identify .... They are anonymous; they are disorganized, they are a minority group which can be discriminated against without prejudice. They represent a very attractive group for powerful symbolic political propaganda and action ....The criminal is a "natural" outcast. If the analogy of the "war on crime" can suggest a transfer of focus from "real war" as the threat used to herd the public along, to a symbolic "war," then the transfer of the threat becomes all the more useful as a political strategy. Thus once again, we have a basis in fear which can be used for partisan purposes.[85]

Media manipulators

Abolitionists recognize that the public's image of what constitutes crime is grossly distorted by the powerful alliance between the criminal (in)justice apparatus and the media. Not only is it a major factor in shaping public views of crime, but it minimizes and deflects attention from the common kind of crimes one's neighbors commit and exaggerates and spotlights another less common kind"crime‑in‑the‑streets "‑which is presumably committed by "criminals."[86]

One can imagine the results, for instance, if that powerful media coalition chose to focus on the fact that in reality, the level of physical violence is greater in the homes of America than on the streets:[87]

• Child abuse, wife beating, father‑rape of daughters, murder of spouses, murder of parents, murder of and by relatives and assault between family members would he front page headline news every day.
• Television news cameras would be trained on the family home instead of the street.
• Each year the F.B.I.would issue statistics indicating the highest family crime rate on record.
• The law enforcement apparatus would purchase hardware to "combat" crimes of violence in the family.
• LEAA would commission studies to construct a profile of the family criminal.
• Political officeseekers would insist upon mandatory, lengthy sentences for family criminals and make political speeches declaring a war against all family criminals.
• Jails would be filledwith pretrial detained family criminals.
• Family criminal "treatment" programs would be measured for effectiveness based on recidivism.

It would not take long before exposure to such a daily media/law enforcement diet of violence in the home would raise the fears of the public to the extent that the family hearth would become as frightening a setting as the city street.

Or visualize the same media/law enforcement coalition zooming in on "crime in the suites" rather than "crime in the streets." The public would soon be clamoring for stiffer laws, penalties and controls on corporations if they digested a daily diet of corporate and collective crimes: overseas and domestic bribery; economic crimes; corporate pollution; unsafe conditions for workers and shoddy merchandise such as unsafe automobiles to name a few. But for obvious reasons of privilege and interests, the focus of the criminal (in)justice systems and the media is not on corporate crime.

Each week brings a fresh disclosure of dubious corporate practice. The acknowledgement by Lockheed, a company operating by grace of a historic federal bailout, of payment over the last five years of $22 million in foreign bribes, or "kickbacks" as the company prefers to call them, is current news.

The harm to society from such wrongdoing is substantially less obvious than street crimes against people, but it is no less real and every bit as damaging. Massive, secret and illegal campaign contributions‑seeking as they do, disproportionate impact on elections and bloated influence thereafter‑distort the political process and dilute each citizen's political birthright. Similarly, the spectacle of the country's business elite buying up foreign officials in the name of profit undermines the moral foundations of the society.

Yet, wrist slapping is the usual and anticipated response to corporate criminality... In paying an average fine of $7,000, the firms prosecuted by the Special Prosecutor paid off their fines with about six seconds of corporate activity. Most of the executives prosecuted are either still presiding over their companies or are now living in extraordinarily comfortable semiretirement. And it is still not clear that foreign bribery even constitutes criminal conduct under the laws of the United States.

‑Editorial, New York Times, September 9,1975

The damage wrought by these media manipulators is tremendous. As one newscaster points out:

In essence, the media defines who and what is legitimate .... What is good and right and safe for society ... and what isn't. It is key to the whole process of identifying and isolating the people deemed dangerous or undesirable by those who control the media. In a society run by the very rich ... it is the concerns of the poor that become somehow illegitimate, unimportant. To an overwhelmingly white nation, Blacks are outside the pall, darkly dangerous, those who threaten the structure, thru mass movement, individual action, or simply by their very existence, lose their right to be portrayed as human beings in the media. They become, in short, "criminals" of one degree or another. And criminals once labelled, have no rights that society is bound to respect. Hence, Attica.

Who is, in fact, a criminal, then, depends upon your point of view or rather your position in society. More than five times as much money is embezzled from banks by executives, than is stolen by men with guns. Abuse of police power robs Blacks and poor people of their basic right to life and liberty. Billions of dollars in social welfare funds voted by Congress are withheld by the executive branch of government, in effect stealing bread from the mouths of children and shelter from entire families ....

The media is largely blind to these crimes. Preferring to vilify the "street criminal" and "welfare cheater." By so doing, the media becomes an accessory to the rape of the powerless. Blacks must define for themselves what is criminal, within and outside our communities. They must include not only the street corner mugger, the drug pusher and the rapist in the alley, but also the corrupt and brutal policeman, the greedy slum lord, the exploitive businessman, the oppressive employer, the racist school administrator, the fascist politician and the war mongering head of state. The Black media must isolate and focus attention upon all the forces which undermine the quality of our lives. They must be indicted, in print and over the airwaves.

‑From a paper by Glen Ford, Mutual Black Network News.[88]

Street crime and its victims

Of the millions of crimes committed by all strata of society, comparatively little is committed in the streets. Middle class and upper class property crimes take place in the "suites" rather than in the streets, behind the closed doors of corporate presidents' offices or in the privacy of the home where income tax forms are filled out. Such crimes cost the public more than street crimes and crimes against property combined. In its 1974 publication, White Collar Crime, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimates that the yearly cost of embezzlement and pilferage exceeds by several billion dollars the losses from burglary and robbery.[89]

Abolitionists are aware that poor peoples' crimes victimize mostly the poor and the Black, tho the media consistently bombards the American people with a set of false and racist myths about crime:

Crime news plays a big role in forming public attitudes. A strong tendency to cover crimes with white victims and ignore those with Black victims distorts the broad picture the public gets on the subject‑specifically by making whites feel especially threatened.

In fact, when the Community Renewal Society recently issued a computerized study of homicide in Chicago during 1973, two key findings caused general public surprise: nearly 70 percent of the murder victims in the city were Blacks, and only 15 percent of all murders were across racial lines.

To compare the picture the public received about murders with what actually occurred, I checked Chicago police reports on homicides during the first three months of 1973 against coverage of the crimes in the final edition of the Chicago Tribune .... During that period there were 215 murders in the city, and 51 got some coverage in the Tribune. Twelve were described in stories that ran on pages one thru five.

While only 20 percent of the murder victims during this period were white, nearly half of the 51 murder stories were about white victims. Up front in the paper, where readership is high, the imbalance was even stronger--two‑thirds of the murder stories on pages one thru five involved white victims.

To state the statistics another way, a white person slain during this period had a one‑in‑two chance of being mentioned in the paper, and a one‑in‑seven chance of winding up on pages one thru five. But the chances of a Black victim making it into the paper was one in seven, and of winding up on pages one thru five, one in 100.

From this it would seem that the public could draw simple and erroneous conclusions about crime: middle class whites are the most frequent victims of murder. In fact, as the Community Renewal Society survey showed, most violent crime is confined to poor Blacks‑poor Black victims attacked by other poor Blacks in their neighborhood.

‑Phil Blake, "Race, Homicide and the News," The Nation, December 7, 1974, pp.592‑93

The majority of all crimes of property committed on the street do not involve physical brutality. Violent crimes such as murder and aggravated assault, for instance, occur mainly indoors and the participants are usually acquainted or related.[90]

The risks of victimization from crimes of the poor‑robbery, muggings and purse‑snatchings which constitute the majority of street crimes‑are concentrated in the lowest income group. Nonwhites are victimized disproportionately by all major crimes except larceny of $50 and over. A Black man in Chicago, for instance, runs the risk of being a victim nearly six times as often as a white man; a Black woman nearly eight times as often as a white woman. Additionally, Blacks are most likely to assault Blacks, and whites most likely to assault whites. Thus, while Black males account for two‑thirds of all assaults, the person who victimizes a white person is most likely also to be white.[91]

The overall impression created by the mass media is that (1) most victims of crime are white, (2) most criminals are Black and (3) the average murder occurs in the course of a mugging.

Government statistics show that all three notions are false....

A brief Columbia Journalism Review survey of t. v. news programs, the source of 70 percent of the news diet of the average American, shows that during a one month period in New York, 44 percent of the reports on murders involved white victims of Blacks, while an even more misleading 86 percent were on murders committed in the course of a street robbery or mugging.

In fact, only a tiny percentage of murders are committed in the course of a robbery. Murder is, in the vast majority of cases, a crime committed by a person who is related to or otherwise knows his victim intimately.

‑Benjamin Bedell, "Racist Myths on Crime Promoted by Media," Guardian, January 15, 1975, p. 8

For those who are cruelly victimized on the streets, even tho few in number compared to all criminal victims, statistics are of little solace. The experience of being robbed or mugged is frightening and damaging, particularly for the elderly poor already victimized by circumstance.

To a poor person, Black and ghetto‑bound, it matters little that statistics tell us that chances of a victim being injured in an auto accident are 16 times greater than the probability of being a victim of crime on the street.[92] The poor do not have autos.

Of what use is the statistic that there is an infinitesimal one in 40,000 probability of becoming involved in a felony resulting in death [93] when the media and the law enforcement apparatus has raised fears to such an extent that homes have literally become prisons?

The largest prison in America has no bars, no locks, and no guards. The inmates are absolutely free to go anywhere they want at any time they choose .... No accurate statistics exist to tell the exact number of persons so imprisoned. This is not only because the number is so large and increasing so rapidly .... No statistics exist because these prisoners are all serving self‑imposed sentence that only they can terminate ....Millions of ... formerly outgoing people have sentenced themselves to indefinite imprisonment within their homes and apartments behind locked doors and barred windows.

‑Dorothy Samuel, "Safe Passage," Fellowship, April 1975, p. 3

New responses to street crimes

Each community, given the proper resources and services could begin to effectively deal with problems of crime on the street. However, community members realize no program can be totally successful until the root problems of unemployment, powerlessness, racism and economic exploitation are remedied. These systemic failings are the root cause of poor peoples' economic crimes:

Able bodied Black and Hispanic men stand in ever greater numbers on the street corners during these days of deepening recession. The unemployment rate for minority teenagers seeking work is now soaring toward an appalling 40 percent. The country at least flirted with these problems thru the Great Society programs of the mid‑60's. When those programs were precipitately abandoned as utopian and fruitless, hundreds of thousands of citizens of this city--and millions elsewhere‑were doomed to an environment of futility, alienation and profound hostility. This severed the civilizing connection of hope for a decent life without which conventional appeals to law and order might just as well be issued in Urdu.

‑Roger Wilkins, "Crime and the Streets," New York Times, February 18, 1975

If you walk a few blocks from my house in New York you will see that the seven percent unemployment we now have translates out to kids standing around the street corner with nothing to do. It translates out to 41 percent unemployment among Black teenagers ... the source of a tremendous amount of street crime .... Most of it is committed against themselves, against other Blacks. That is because they have the highest degree of unemployment, school drop outs and the least is done for those kids. They do not get unemployment compensation because they have never had a job. What is more, they are never going to have a job .... It is just as predictable as that a candle will burn out that many of those kids will be lost to drug addiction, lost forever to the welfare system, and even more will be lost forever to crime.

‑‑‑Tom Wicker, Remarks to Lehigh Valley Bail Fund, March 18, 1976, reprinted in Pretrial Justice Quarterly, Spring 1976, pp. 42‑43

Crime & the Minority Community Conference

Despite awareness that poor peoples' economic crimes are rooted in the social structure, communities fear they will "water the seeds" of police repression if they do not engage forcefully in the struggle to make their communities safe.

As in other urban settings, street crime has become a major concern of urban Black community residents in recent years. A survey by Louis Harris in 1973 revealed that 77 percent of the residents of Harlem who were polled felt that "crime in the streets" was a "very serious problem."[94]

Concern about the escalating street crime rate in minority communities, led the Criminal Justice Priority Team of the United Church of Christ in conjunction with several national religious, civic and civil rights organizations to sponsor a national conference on "Crime and the Minority Community" in Washington, D.C., October 1974. The conference, attended by over 300 participants, brought together community activists from around the country to share insights and projects which could be useful in confronting crime and discovering causes in their communities.

During the three conference days, participants identified common community needs to respond to the problem of community crime. They included:

• Full employment.
• Elimination of economic, political and racial repression.
• Procedures to combat police brutality.
• Alternatives to incarceration.
• Eliminating discrimination against ex‑prisoners.
• Organization of community pressure groups to improve services.

Emphasizing that anticrime programs are designed to develop nonlethal and nonvigilante style programs to combat crime, they focused on methods to minimize the opportunity for crime to occur. Individual program goals for a community anticrime model included:

• Reduction of crime.
• Reduction of fear.
• Increased citizen confidence.
• Increased citizen participation.
• Deglorification of the Black "criminal."

The conference noted that almost every imaginable crime prevention program is in operation somewhere in New York, but very few exist in the minority community.

Innovative programs that could be duplicated were described:

• In Ohio, the East Cleveland Rent‑a‑Kid program, designed to provide employment for teenagers within their local communities, gives youngsters a chance to obtain money without resorting to criminal activities.
• In Chicago a women's coalition working without government or foundation funds, conducts community meetings and workshops to allow community residents to voice their problems, concerns and to devise preventative programs to deal with crime. The Coalition of Concerned Women in the War on Crime attempts to convey these concerns to the police department in an effort to open the lines of communication between the police and the community, while working with the local community to participate in anticrime efforts of its own. Over 1500 citizens have responded actively to the work of the coalition.
• In Washington, D.C. the Black Assembly worked with two Black police officers to set up citizens patrols (Uhuru Sasa Courtesy Patrol and the United Brothers Watchers) to help make the streets in Southeast D.C. free from crime. Regular cultural and history classes were set up for the teenagers in the community to instill pride and respect for the community. Voter registration and tutorial programs were also undertaken. Police officers who were working on this project, without police authority, were summarily transferred to another area and constantly harassed.

The effectiveness of the project decreased when city funding was obtained. Patrol leaders were harassed by the police until the project went out of existence. The program later re‑emerged in an impotent form under the auspices of the Mayor. If kept from becoming "a political football," this project could be duplicated.

Because of widespread police brutality, corruption, abuse of power and other acts committed by members of the police department against minorities, many of the United Church of Christ's conference participants raised serious questions about the nature of cooperation with law enforcement agencies. Police departments tend to work with citizen groups only when the department is in control of the program, as opposed to working on an equal level. However, conferees agreed each community group should forge the alliances they see as beneficial and productive to their local efforts.

Participants took critical note of huge expenditures by LEAA to purchase guns, tanks, helicopters, submarines, boats, computers and other weapons from the U.S. military arsenal field‑tested in Vietnam. Despite statistics that show increased use of hardware and patrols are not the answer to street crimes, LEAA continues a militarized response while paying mere lip service to minority citizen involvement and needs. The conference proposed an investigation be undertaken to examine the use of funds and effectiveness of LEAA programs to reduce crime in minority communities.

Finally, the conference cited specific program models which reflect some of the immediate needs of minority communities in anti‑crime efforts. They included:

• Education programs to promote an understanding of the causes of crime and its minimization in minority communities.
• Two‑waycommunication efforts with all segments of the community, as well as with the police department, particularly where minorities are in positions of power.
• Development of dispute settlement mechanisms in the community in an attempt to minimize conflict that may get out of hand.
• Increased citizen's development, control and participation in anticrime efforts on the local level.
• Pretrial diversion and release programs, particularly for juveniles.
• Neighborhood street and building patrols.
• Challenges to the excessive issuance of liquor licenses within minority communities.
• Cultural programs that seek to enhance the positive values of the community.
• Monitoring incidents of crime to obtain a more accurate barometer of the crime crisis.
• Safety patrols in schools and campuses established by youth and student groups.
• Education of the community on law enforcement procedures and what their rights are when arrested or detained.

The military model for crime prevention should he abolished. It is clear that neither punishment by prison nor training police for a community combat role can solve the problem of street crime, in the long range, nothing less than social restructuring will accomplish the goal of greatly reducing poor peoples' economic crimes, but in the interim, communities must be made safe and the victims protected and cared for. This requires that funding be diverted to those services and resources communities identify as vital to their efforts to create a safer society and to bring relief to the victims.

Community people can empower themselves to turn away from their fortress existence and transform their streets into real neighborhoods where all are safe and welcome. In Philadelphia, a small number of concerned citizens have organized to make their streets safer from crime, building a sense of neighborhood at the same time. Its program. CLASP, provides an opportunity for communities to take more power over their own lives, and has significantly reduced crime.

CLASP

Four years ago, a group of concerned neighbors in a section of West Philadelphia came together to confront the fact that they were living in the highest crime rate area of the highest crime rate district in their city. It is a mixed, Black and white, working class and middle income neighborhood. Muggings and burglaries were so prevalent that many people found themselves victimized more than once. A crisis came when three women were raped in a two block area within two weeks.

A friend of one of the rape victims called a block meeting. Expecting a small group from her own block to come to her home, she was surprised when people from five additional blocks responded, a total of 80 people.

After an evening of open discussion, it was decided that the most effective action would be community action. From this meeting grew the Block Association of West Philadelphia: neighborhood crime prevention based on self‑management concepts.

Everyone wanted safer streets, streets that could be walked by day and by night, free from fear. All grew to realize that the only way to safety was thru linking neighbors together as friends instead of strangers.

Eventually, the Block Association of West Philadelphia aligned itself with CLASP, Citizens' Local Alliance for a Safer Philadelphia, an educational coalition working in community crime prevention. CLASP adopted the community action organizing model of the Block Association.[95]

Preventing burglary. Simple techniques to make apartments and houses safer from burglary were implemented. These included such obvious precautions as keeping windows locked, installing door locks that can't be jimmied, keeping porch lights blazing. Makeshift burglar alarms were created simply and inexpensively by hanging strands of jinglebells on doors.

More important was the sharpened awareness of the need for neighbors to have ties with one another. At block association meetings, neighborliness grew. Telephone numbers were exchanged. People became conscious of who was customarily on the street.

Would‑be burglars generally spend time "casing" a block. They study the habit of residents in order to know which houses and apartments are vacant and at what times. When people passing on the street know each other and when they speak a friendly "hello" to strangers, most burglars quickly disappear.

Another community crime prevention technique put into practice by CLASP is Operation l.D. An electric engraving machine is available to residents so that they can put their Social Security numbers on valuable personal property. Notices to this effect are posted on the doors of houses so protected. More than 50 electric engravers are now in use in Philadelphia.

Neighborhood walk. Block associations also addressed themselves to the problem of street crimes. Muggers and other street criminals nearly always choose as victims those who walk alone at night. People decided to walk in groups of two or more after dark. Here again, raising neighborhood illumination by leaving on porch lights was stressed.

Out of the basic concept of block organizing grew the idea of the neighborhood walk, an unarmed foot patrol. Two or more persons walk thru the neighborhood. The walkers wear no i.d. or armbands. The time and route of each walk are unpublicized. To the potential wrongdoer who has heard of this program, any two or more people walking together might be one of these patrols.

If walkers encounter a street crime in progress, they are prepared to take action. In addition to flashlights, walkers carry a freon horn--a loud signalling device. When people hear a horn go off, they come out of their houses signalling with their own freon horns.

CLASP recommends that as many residents as possible of organized blocks own freon horns, it buys them at wholesale from the manufacturer and makes them available to the community at cost.

The organization of neighborhood walks varies because each block association is autonomous. The amount of time volunteered by an individual walker might vary from two hours per month to four hours each week, in addition to the monthly meeting of the block association.

Of the 30,000 blocks in the city of Philadelphia, CLASP has thus far organized about 600. These

block associations are scattered thruout the city in more than 20 neighborhoods, including some of the most blighted areas of the city. CLASP prefers not to discuss how many of the block associations have neighborhood walks. This is partly because the figure varies from month to month, as walks are started or dropped, according to conditions in specific neighborhoods. It is also because the very idea of neighborhood walks is thought to discourage street crime, whether or not the walks are actually taking place.

A most important side effect of the neighborhood, walk is that participants have gradually lost their fear of the streets. The streets have begun to fill up with people again--a bad situation for the mugger or rapist who must be alone on the street with his/her prospective victim.

Evaluation. According to a survey conducted by CLASP in spring 1976, 20 organized blocks had on the average only 25 percent as much crime as the police districts in which the blocks are located. A more intensive victimization survey of nine organized blocks in North Philadelphia shows that‑with one exception‑crime has been reduced on each block. The amounts of this reduction range from 11 percent to 79 percent, averaging 33 percent overall.

A grant from the LEAA funds the training of neighborhood organizers from other high crime cities in the state‑Pittsburgh, York, Harrisburg and Chester. Requests for information and resources have been received from many cities outside the state.

Block organizations have found ways of effectively reducing crime in their neighborhoods. It is worth noting that they have been able to do this nonviolently. CLASP strongly advises people to avoid the vigilanteism of privately owned guns, noting that having guns around often results in the injury or death of innocent persons; using a gun in response to a burglar or a street criminal escalates the likelihood of serious violence without assuring that innocent persons will not be hurt.

Block organizing, based on self‑managing, nonviolent principles, clearly demonstrates an alternative to the war model employed elsewhere‑the proliferation of lethal weapons and military tactics. However, when suspected lawbreakers are apprehended, they are turned over to the police and the criminal (in)justice systems' punitive institutions and procedures.

Until real communities can be created‑communities where poverty is eliminated and the commission of economic crimes is no longer an attractive option‑the CLASP model is worth emulating. In many ways block organizations are a step toward the creation of true community. They empower neighborhoods and individuals to increase the safety of their homes and their streets.