Assignment Details

Prior to your graduation from AIU, you have been working as the Victims’ Assistant Advocate for the office of the local county prosecutor. You have a great working relationship with the prosecutor, Mary, and the remainder of the office. Normally, when you speak, the staff and the prosecutor know that you are speaking from a knowledge base that you have gained from personal experience, research, and reading, so they know that your comments are facts.
You have decided to speak with the prosecutor, Mary, on behalf of Maureen, a college student who was a victim of date rape. You want to convince Mary to support a change in the prosecutor’s policy of not prosecuting date rape cases when drugs or alcohol are involved. Mary has a strict policy: When someone wants to speak with her about changing an established policy, she wants the person to submit a paper of 35 pages containing topic bullets that outline his or her argument for the policy change prior to meeting her. This way she feels that she is not blind-sided, and that she has an opportunity to research the topic prior to the meeting.
You follow her policy and write a paper using bullets only, hoping that you can persuade Mary and the chief prosecutor to change their policy or, at a minimum, meet with you for a discussion about changing the policy. Maureen knows that other young women are being attacked and that, very often, date rape drugs are being used.
Mary has agreed to review your policy change letter if you write it. You write the policy change paper in which you have the following goals:

Educate Mary about date rape using statistics and information about date rape and date rape drugs to show her that Maureen is one of the types of victims who perpetrators take advantage of in these situations.
Explain why not prosecuting the cases is the wrong public and social policy. (You are also hopeful that the victim, Maureen, also receives help in her case.)

To organize your efforts before your meeting, create a detailed outline where appropriate that contains information for the following 5 topics in 3-5 pages:

List crime statistics reported by Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) and the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) relating to rape and the strengths and weaknesses of each type of reporting.
Define the term date rape (or acquaintance rape; the terms are interchangeable) and how date rape is distinguished from stranger rape, statutory rape, and spousal rape.
List the types and uses of date rape drugs.
Describe the victimoffender relationship, including the following:

How victims are viewed by perpetrators of date rape
The special problems of date rape prosecutions
How society and jurors may view date rape (e.g., blaming the victim based on the perceived precipitation, facilitation, or provocation of the victim)

What is your position on this issue, and what action do you think would impact this social policy?