> Continuing that thought:
>
> Last year, New York City (which includes
>Manhattan, the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, and
>Staten Island) had 866 reported incidents of
>forcible rape, down from 1998's 1092 reports.
>With a population of 7,322,564 (and not counting
>the millions of people who commute or visit the
>city each year), that's a rape incidence of about
>one out of every 8500 people.
>
> New Haven, CT has a population of 130,474. In
>the same period, there were 30 forcible rapes, or
>about one for every 4400 residents.
>
> West Valley, UT? 86,976 people. 33 reports of
>forcible rape in 1999. That's one report for
>every 2700 people.
>
> Salem, OR -- 107,786 residents, 42 rapes;
>1:2600.
>

First of all, I'm trying to figure out what other kinds of rape there *are* besides 'forcible' rape. By definition rape is the crime of having sexual relations with a non-consenting individual--and except for statutory rape or rape in which the victim is passed out completely cold, I can't figure out how you can have sex with a non-consenting individual and *not* have it be forcible in some way.

Second, those 'Take Back The Night' marches are specifically geared towards nightime attacks by random criminals on unsuspecting people. And rape is much more often commited by someone the victim knows, and not the result of a random attack.

So I say go back and find out how many of those rapes you sited were the 'nighttime attack by random criminal' type, and how many were the much more common 'someone you know' type, and *then* figure out the distribution by population for those areas.

Of course, I'm not saying any one area is better because it has less random attacks and more date-rapes per capita--far from it. But I *am* saying that these "Take Back The Night" marches in places like Durham NH (where, again, I can't recall a single person getting attacked in the four years I spent there) are at best pointless and at worst end up scaring people unduly. Common sense alone tells you that a person, especially a woman, shouldn't walk alone at night across campus, even in sleepy Durham NH, even though doing so probably would not result in any catastrophe. But scaring the crap out of people with these marches doesn't help in an area like that, and it might even move focus away from the *much* more common crime of date rape, which *did* occur at UNH while I was there.

So I still stand by what I said before. I'd be much more supportive of programs that actually dealt with issues *pertinent* to the area.

-- Dave