The Nonprosecution of Sexual Abuse and Informal Justice

Abstract

Within recent years, considerable attention has focused upon the appropriate criminal justice response to cases of child sexual abuse. The present article examines prosecutorial discretion for sexual abuse under the domain of a recent mandatory district attorney reporting law (Massachusetts Chapter 288). Utilizing case files for one metropolitan jurisdiction, this research analyzes the reasons cited for the screening decision not to prosecute sexual abuse and the related use of informal dispositions in these cases. The study found that 45% of the cases referred to this prosecutor's office resulted in a nonprosecution decision. The primary reasons given were witness noncooperation and evidentiary problems, which were cited in over two-thirds of the cases. For all but two of these nonprosecuted cases, some informal disposition took place. For most, the alleged perpetrator was out of the victim's home, with another third involving a restraining or no visitation order against the accused offender, or the removal of the victim from the home. Thus, although formal criminal court prosecution was recommended in just over one-half of the cases, some form of family intervention to reduce the “at-risk” situation for the child victim took place in virtually all of the cases. These results suggest the importance of considering informal, discretionary techniques and dispositions as well as formal actions in evaluating a criminal justice response to child sexual abuse.

What Makes Sex Offenders Confess? An Exploratory Study

“…For example, MacMurray (1988; found that close to half of child sexual abuse cases referred to the prosecutor's office for criminal prosecution were screened out by the prosecutor. Cross and colleagues (Cross, DeVos, & Whitcomb, 1994;Cross, Whitcomb, & DeVos, 1995), who followed cases in four United States jurisdictions, describe comparable results.…”

Prosecutorial Decision Making and Case Attrition for Child Sexual Abuse: A Qualitative Approach to Case Rejection Decisions

“…Third, in addition to providing a means of clarifying and further specifying the nature of victim/witness, perpetrator, and evidentiary problems for prosecutor rejection decisions, this analysis also suggests several other variables worthy of further analysis (see also Mac Murray, 1988;Mac Murray, 1989). Two case features emerged inductively from the qualitative examination of individual case record files which are particularly important for understanding these sexual abuse cases and their attrition decisions.…”

‘No action required’: A historical pattern of inaction and discretion towards child sexual abuse in Queensland policing

“…More so than other areas of policing, there has been some level of scholarly interest in the application of a discretionary approach to the enforcement of laws relating to child sexual abuse. Mac Murray (1988) conducted an investigation of child sexual abuse referrals in an undisclosed US jurisdiction which showed that 45% of reported sexual abuse cases resulted in no further prosecution; this data is useful in establishing a broad context, in that it is reflective of similar findings related to the policing of child sexual abuse in Queensland during roughly the same time frame (Leivesley, 1984). Mac Murray's findings seem contrary to the idea that the Queensland Police Force were exceptional in their approach to child sexual abuse in this period.…”