Mick Hartley

Well this is good news (via Metafilter):

The U.S. Justice Department’s National Crime Victimization Survey (considered our best measure of crime because its anonymous surveys capture offenses not reported to police) reports that rape has been falling dramatically for decades. The first survey, in 1973, estimated that 105,000 females, ages 12 to 24, were raped that year. In the 1980s and early 1990s, the survey was expanded to include sexual assault and attempted or threatened offenses. Even so, the latest survey (in a young female population 1 million larger than in 1973) reported that 30,000 females, ages 12 to 24, were raped and 60,000 were victims of attempted rape or real or attempted sexual offenses (including verbal threats) in 2005.

The crime surveys further indicate that the decline in sexual violence is greater among younger females than older women. In the last dozen years, they found that sexual victimization rates among girls ages 12 to 19 fell by 78% and among women ages 20 to 24 by 70%, nearly double the drop among women older than 25….

Why has rape and violence against women, particularly younger women, declined so dramatically over the last generation?

Little research exists on this question, and tentative explanations — from tougher sentencing of violent offenders to pornography’s effects in sublimating violence — are not persuasive.

The three-decade decline in teenage and young-adult rape accompanies huge drops in all crimes — murder, assault, drug abuse and property — committed by youth. And get-tough policies designed to imprison more teenagers don’t seem to be a factor either. Just-released California Division of Juvenile Justice figures show that fewer youths are locked up today than in 1959, when numbers were first reported.

The most likely explanation involves impressive generational developments. In 1970, women made up one-third of all college students (versus 57% today), earned about one-fourth of all young-adult income (versus nearly half today) and made up small fractions of doctors and lawyers (versus majorities of new entrants into these fields now). Women’s rapidly rising status and economic independence in the larger society fostered new attitudes and laws that rejected violence against women.

That younger people growing up in this environment of greater gender equality should show the biggest decreases in rape, while older generations lag behind, is consistent with this explanation. The youngest teenagers (presumably those raised with the most modern attitudes) show the biggest declines of all. Over the last 30 years, rape arrest rates have fallen by 80% among Californians under age 15, much larger than the 25% drop among residents age 40 and older.

What do they say? – California’s ahead of the rest of the US by 10 years, and the US is ahead of the UK by 10 years. So give it 20 years…