Combatting Rape Myth Acceptance in United States' Criminal Justice System with Behavioral Economics

Abstract

Using behavioral economics, this paper aims to analyze how rape myth acceptance presents itself in the form of numerous heuristics and biases throughout various stages of the United States’ criminal justice process that a sexual assault case must progress through. Due to the availability heuristic, inaccurate representation of sexual assault in the media promotes rape myth acceptance (RMA) among the general public, including potential jurors and law enforcement officers. Resultantly, police officers’ decision-making processes while investigating sexual assault reports implicitly discriminate female victims as officers struggle with the downstream orientation phenomenon.. In the trial stage, jurors utilize the representativeness heuristic to process complex case information by comparing the rape victim to a mental prototype shaped by rape myths. This hinders the jurors’ human information processing capabilities. Solutions to rape myth acceptance in the United States’ criminal justice system will be described in order to battle the high attrition rate of sexual assault cases.