Criminal Law Commons^™

A Deficiency In Addressing Campus Sexual Assault: The Lack Of Women Law Enforcement Officers, Nat Stern, Karen Oehme

Scholarly Publications

The federal government has taken a range of measures to combat the scourge of sexual assault afflicting college campuses across the nation. Whatever the efficacy of these policies, however, they fail to address a major obstacle to curbing sexual violence on campus: the chronically low rate of reporting of this crime to police. Research on crime data has produced evidence that as female representation among police officers increases, more crimes against women are reported. Yet, most university campus law enforcement agencies-tasked with taking a “central role” in combatting sexual assault-include strikingly few female officers. This Article proposes an increase in …