The results of the investigation — based on a review of thousands of documents from police departments, prosecutors and courts in cities from Los Angeles to Boston — underscore what many advocates, experts and some law enforcement authorities have long said: The system routinely fails to get justice for victims.
NBC News spent more than a year tracing offenses from crime to conviction and found: Violent sex crimes have a lower arrest rate than most violent crimes. In Chicago, Black victims of sex crimes are the least likely to see a conviction. Those accused of violent sex crimes were often able to secure plea deals that would keep them off the sex offender list. This happens even in California, which usually prohibits the practice.
“Our system, from arrest for conviction to crimes, is not transparent. There’s no overarching data source like there are in other countries,” said University of Kansas School of Law research professor Corey Yung, who has specialized in this research for the last decade. “It makes it incredibly difficult, in criminal law, to know what’s going on, from reported crimes all the way to convictions.”
Yung said greater awareness has still not translated to more perpetrators being held accountable.
The chart shows that crimes of sexual violence had a lower arrest rate than drug and property crimes in 2023, the latest year of data available. Experts say the number of sexual crimes reported to officials is an undercount of the crimes that occur.
“A fraction of cases that get reported to police, a tiny fraction, end up resulting in any kind of sentence for the person accused,” Northwestern University law professor Deborah Tuerkheimer, a former assistant district attorney in Manhattan, told NBC 5 Chicago. “Remember, too, that most sexual assault cases don’t get reported at all,” Tuerkheimer said. “One reason for that is what I call the credibility discount — the likelihood that someone will not be believed, or will be blamed, or will just be disregarded if that person comes forward.”
The NBC News investigation found stark racial disparities in conviction outcomes. In Chicago, Black victims of sexual violence were the least likely to see their perpetrators convicted. The report also found that while the race of the accused did not significantly affect prosecution rates, cases involving white victims were more likely to result in a sex crime conviction. This pattern highlights systemic issues related to race, where victims’ backgrounds appear to influence the likelihood of seeing justice served.
In Chicago, for instance, a comprehensive review of police reports revealed that out of 21,471 reported sex crimes between 2018 and 2023, only 1,587 resulted in arrests, and only around 400 of those cases led to a sex crime conviction. Of those convicted, 99 individuals never saw any prison time. In other cities like San Francisco and San Diego, the conviction rates were slightly higher, but still, the numbers remain alarmingly low. In San Francisco, 5.1% of reported sex crimes resulted in at least one conviction for any charge, while in San Diego, the figure was slightly higher at 7.8%.
The findings of NBC News’ investigation paint a grim picture of the criminal justice system’s failure to hold perpetrators of violent sex crimes accountable. Despite increased awareness and tougher laws in some states, the conviction rates for these offenses remain dismally low. The emotional and legal barriers faced by victims, along with systemic racial biases and a lack of transparency in how cases are handled, contribute to a system that often fails to deliver justice.