Until last year, the FBI’s definition of rape sounded like something out of the 1920s. That’s because it was. In its annual Uniform Crime Report, which is the official tally of crimes around the US based on annual law enforcement reports, “forcible rape” was defined as “the carnal knowledge of a female, forcibly and against her will.”
The FBI finally changed its narrow, outdated definition of rape
The FBI finally updated its definition of the crime to match the times, and newly released UCR data suggests that the archaic forcible rape standard caused a significant percentage of rape cases to go unreported.
The new definition
The national understanding of rape has changed entirely since 1929, when the FBI started the Uniform Crime Report. States and courts have updated and expanded sexual assault laws, and the public has a broader understanding of who counts as a victim or survivor. But even as the legal definition of rape changed, the FBI continued to use the 1929 standard when it asked states and local law enforcement agencies to report the year’s rape cases to the UCR — and when it calculated local and national crime rates based on that data.
Starting in 2013, the agency now defines rape as “penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.” The new wording, which is more or less in line with standard state sexual assault laws, notably removes references to gender; ditches “forcible” in favor of “without the consent of the victim” (an acknowledgment that a victim doesn’t have to physically fight an attacker for a rape to occur); includes sex acts that aren’t intercourse; and notes that penetration with an object, not just a body part, can be rape.
The first set of data collected under the new standard has just been released. It's too early to draw firm conclusions based on last year's data — several states, including California and New York, were still using the old definition of rape in 2013.
But using a sample of data from 14 states that reported rapes that fell under both the old definition and the new definition, the FBI came up with an estimate of how many cases had gone uncounted in the UCR. Their conclusion: an estimated 40 percent of rapes (including rapes of men, rape with an object, and non-vaginal rape) were left out of official FBI statistics until last year.
Why did the FBI make the change?
The UCR forcible rape standard was totally out of line with the modern legal understanding of rape. It’s mind-boggling that male rape victims, for instance, have been left out of the agency’s official crime statistics for almost a century.
But the FBI says that even prior to 2013, many of the rapes that fit the new, broader wording should have still been reported to the agency by police departments — at least as far as the standard for consent is concerned.
“The term forcible under the old definition was always trained and collected as ‘against the will of the victim,’” said Stephen Fischer of the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services division. “For example, drug-facilitated sexual assaults, or sexual assaults of unconscious victims, were counted as forcible.”
The problem, Fischer said, is that some law enforcement agencies didn’t get that message. They were only reporting rapes that involved physical force, based on the term “forcible” — rather than the FBI’s interpretation. So the FBI changed the definition to eliminate any confusion.
But they don’t believe that the changed consent standard is going to substantially increase the number of rapes being reported to them each year. That’s why they think the 40 percent number — which only includes cases of male rape, rape with an object, and non-vaginal rape — is a fair estimate of what they’ve been missing.
How accurate are the new statistics?
These protesters against prison rape are from the Republic of Georgia, but it's also a huge problem in the US. (Vano Shlamov/AFP/Getty Images)
Because many crimes — especially rapes — go unreported, it’s hard to know how many cases of rape just aren’t being tallied by law enforcement for the FBI’s report. And while the FBI tries to revise its estimates to count unreported rapes, it doesn’t exactly have a way to tell how many rapes it doesn’t know about.
So, taking the data from all states into account, the FBI estimates that there were 79,770 rapes in the US in 2013 under the old definition, and around 108,612 rapes under the new definition. But the actual number could be even higher.
This is actually an even bigger problem under the new definition, because the FBI now has to consider unreported rape of men. Rape of men is a tremendous problem, especially in US prisons. Some estimates have indicated that, because of prison rapes, more men are actually raped in the US than women.
But prison rape is especially likely to go unreported, and it looks like that's a huge issue for the FBI. Among the 14 states that sent detailed reports to the FBI last year, there was one rape of a male for every 44 rapes of females. So if the FBI's definition of rape is going to include rapes of men in practice, not just in theory, it's going to have to figure out how to get a better handle on prison rape.
Why does the FBI’s definition matter?
The FBI didn't change any laws with this update — the legal standards for rape are set by state laws and court decisions. It won't affect what a perpetrator is charged with in criminal court, or how a police department conducts an investigation. It's simply a standard definition that makes it easier for the FBI to collect data for national crime rates from states with varying rape laws.
But there's still symbolic value to the FBI's wording change, considering the fact that there's so much public debate over what counts as rape — just look at terms like "grey rape," "date rape," and "rape rape."
And the new wording also changes the way official crime statistics are reported, which is important. When someone talks about a city's crime rate, they're probably using the Uniform Crime Report numbers. (The federal government also does a survey of victims every year, which tends to come up with slightly higher crime rates than the survey of law enforcement agencies — because it also includes some unreported crimes.)
The UCR's official rape rate is an important answer to the question "How big a problem is rape, anyway?" That's a question that's going to guide policymakers as they consider changing the law or directing law-enforcement resources — and it's a question that local government and law enforcement agencies have to answer as they apply for federal funding, to help victims or chase down perpetrators.
So next year, once all states are reporting data using the new FBI definition, the answer to "How big a problem is rape?" could be substantially different.
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