Novel ways to reduce campus sexual assault
Sexual assault is a pervasive and persistent problem across the United States and around the world. Unlike other types of violent crime (homicide and robbery, for example), sexual assault is also an important problem on college campuses. This is unacceptable. Many smart and passionate people have worked for a long time to reduce this form of sexual violence, but progress has been slow. If we want different outcomes, we clearly need to do something different. So, what outside-the-box ideas could we be trying?
I am particularly optimistic that technology can help us make progress. One reason for my optimism is that technological innovation simply gives us more options than we had in the past. Another reason I’m optimistic is that tech-based interventions are relatively easy to scale. Programs that require human beings to deliver labor-intensive services are more expensive and difficult to implement well. Avoiding this challenge makes success more likely. Finally, technology can help collect better data, in contexts where human-to-human reporting is less likely — as it is with sexual assault, due to stigma and distrust of institutions.
How might we use high-tech tools to reduce campus sexual assault? One avenue is to increase the likelihood that perpetrators are caught and face consequences for their crimes. (A long empirical literature shows that more reliable, consistent consequences — not necessarily more severe punishment — have a meaningful deterrent effect on crime.) Two tech-based interventions could help us deliver such consequences.
Callisto is a tech platform that gives victims of gender-based violence more options after their assault beyond the current binary of staying silent or going to the authorities. Users can file a time-stamped report “in escrow” while deciding whether to report to institutions like Title IX or the police. This alone is helpful, as many victims wait months or even years to report, and writing down the details while they’re fresh can safeguard evidence. Even more interesting, users can be notified if anyone else saves a Callisto report that identifies the same perpetrator (matched through identifiers such as email, phone number or a social media handle). This can change the calculus of whether to report, as multiple, independent reports against the same perpetrator can make each individual report more credible. In addition, victims may be more likely to report if they know it might help stop a serial offender from hurting more people.
At the same time, more familiar tech tools for catching perpetrators need more investment and attention: law enforcement DNA databases, mandated testing of rape kits for DNA matches, and rape kit tracking combine forensic technology and better data systems to match suspects with crime scene evidence. At this point, every U.S. state has enacted legislation to end backlogs of untested rape kits (an effort led by the Joyful Heart Foundation), and some states now have robust tracking systems that provide better data on what is happening with these cases. DNA is particularly useful in cases where identity is the critical question, versus whether the sexual encounter was consensual. But analyzing rape kits in all cases can still be helpful, as DNA databases help link cases with the same perpetrator. As with Callisto, this can make each individual case stronger, even when consent (not identity) is the core legal question. For instance, if the same person is accused of rape in multiple independent cases, their defense that the sex was consensual in each one seems less plausible.
Another way to use technology is to intervene with would-be perpetrators or victims to prevent crime before it happens.
The Fund to Prevent Sexual Assault (FPSA) includes an incubator for “bold approaches to prevent sexual assault.” The FPSA’s first cohort includes three initiatives targeting young men at risk of perpetrating sexual violence. (Most funding and attention in this space targets women, to help them before or after they become victims, so this alone is a constructive step forward.) The Kaisa Project aims to meet young men where they are: on gaming platforms. It works with online gaming streamers to discuss sexual assault prevention and how to build respectful relationships, providing a healthier alternative to more typical online content. An app called ito (is this ok?) is designed to help young men build healthier relationships. It is an “anonymous, real-time consent reflection tool” that helps them navigate ambiguous situations. And Teach Us Consent is a “youth-focused social media initiative” expanding a successful program in Australia. It develops engaging, educational content about consent.
I love this incubator model and think the FPSA deserves more funding (full disclosure: my team at Arnold Ventures supported this first cohort). It’s a smart approach that not only provides support and mentorship for early-stage initiatives but signals to the field that funding and a like-minded community are available to nurture promising ideas. Look at what organizations like Y Combinator have done in the broader tech world! Imagine if we had that energy in the sexual assault prevention space.
Now for the caveats: As we’ve seen in this field and elsewhere, most of our good ideas won’t work, and some will even backfire. Callisto struggled to get the word out about its platform, and recently announced it is shutting down due to lack of funding. At an event my team hosted on the use of DNA in police investigations, stakeholders worried that rape-kit-testing mandates in the context of underfunded crime labs mean that DNA evidence from other high-priority cases now goes untested — which may or may not be a good trade. And the promising ideas being piloted in the FPSA might be a bust, despite everyone’s best efforts. Even if teens like the new programs, they might not change behavior on the ground.
That’s okay. Our goal should be to fail fast and try again, rather than pretend we won’t fail. The FPSA’s first cohort received that Arnold Ventures funding conditional on participating in rigorous impact evaluations once their programs were off the ground. Measuring the impact of rape kit testing laws on clearance rates and crime incidence (for sexual assault as well as other types of violent crime) should now be a top priority: How often do Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) hits provide new leads in cases, and what is the real-world impact on arrests, convictions, reported crime and victimization? And even though Callisto is not going forward in its current form, it would still be helpful to see evaluations of its impact where it was up and running, and pilots of similar technology elsewhere in the future.
Doing high-quality impact evaluations without high-quality data is difficult. But there is promising work on this front too. The development of “hard-garbling” survey techniques — which make respondents more comfortable being honest by flipping a random subset of “no” responses to “yes” (the researcher can easily adjust the average to get back to the true reporting rate, but any individual respondent has plausible deniability if the data happen to be leaked or hacked) — appears effective, increasing disclosure by victims and perpetrators alike. This is a smart way to measure whether the new ideas we’re trying are effective.
I am pessimistic that any one new idea will make a meaningful dent in the thorny social problem of campus sexual assault, but optimistic that there are solutions to be found. Randomized trials and other rigorous impact evaluations are now common when it comes to “street” violence like shootings and homicide, which mostly affect men. As a result, stakeholders are seeing that well-meaning programs often don’t work, pivoting to test new ideas and learning what does work to save lives. Victims of sexual assault, who are primarily women, deserve this same level of scientific rigor and focus on innovation. Let’s use the new tools available to us to kick off a virtuous cycle of testing, learning and scaling. This is how we will meaningfully reduce campus sexual assault and other forms of sexual violence around the world.
