Fact check: What percentage of reported rapes in the US result in convictions?

1. What the headline numbers claim — a stark gap between reports and convictions

The most direct numerical claim in the provided material is that fewer than 3% of reported sexual assaults lead to felony convictions when translated from RAINN-style metrics: 28 convictions per 1,000 reported assaults and about 25 incarcerations per 1,000 reported assaults, frequently summarized as “nearly 98% of perpetrators are never held fully accountable” through conviction and incarceration ^[1]. These figures are framed as national aggregates by advocacy and criminal-justice summaries; they present convictions and incarcerations as end-points that follow reporting, investigation, charging, prosecution, and adjudication. The numbers are powerful shorthand but conflate distinct stages of the criminal process — reporting does not equal prosecutable evidence, and charging rates are separate from conviction rates, a distinction the sources note implicitly ^[1].

2. Police clearance rates show the investigation bottleneck

A complementary metric in the materials is the police clearance rate for rape investigations, reported at 32% nationwide in 2017 and described as declining over decades, a trend framed as evidence that many reported cases are not being solved or closed by police ^[2]. Clearance rates measure whether an investigation is closed by arrest, exceptional means, or otherwise cleared, not whether a conviction follows; nevertheless, a low clearance rate is a meaningful upstream indicator of why few cases reach prosecutors as chargeable matters. The 2017 figure anchors the conversation to a specific year and shows the investigative phase as a major attrition point between report and conviction ^[2].

3. International comparisons add context but risk misleading parallels

The provided material also includes UK statistics showing only 2.97% of reported rapes led to a suspect being charged, a separate legal metric illustrating a similar problem in another jurisdiction ^[3]. These UK figures are valuable for comparative perspective but cannot be directly applied to U.S. conviction rates because criminal definitions, charging practices, evidentiary standards, and data-collection methods differ markedly between countries. The presence of UK figures in the dataset highlights a broader international pattern of low accountability for sexual crimes, yet relying on cross-jurisdictional parallels risks conflating distinct processes and should be treated as contextual rather than determinative for U.S. rates ^[3].

4. What the sources agree on — systemic attrition across stages

Across the sources there is consensus that attrition occurs at multiple stages: reporting, police investigation, charging, prosecution, and conviction. RAINN-style summaries emphasize the final conviction/incarceration outcomes ^[1], while reporting on police performance emphasizes investigative closures ^[2]. Both perspectives point to systemic barriers—evidentiary challenges, resource constraints, and procedural practices—that reduce the proportion of reports that culminate in convictions. The materials thus converge on an image of a fragmented accountability pipeline in which each stage filters out many cases for different reasons ^{[1] [2]}.

5. Limitations and gaps in the presented evidence

The supplied analyses are valuable but have important limitations: the RAINN-style statistics are aggregate and do not disaggregate by report type, jurisdiction, or case outcome sequence; the 32% clearance figure is anchored to 2017 and may not reflect later trends; and the UK charging percentage cannot substitute for U.S. conviction data ^{[1] [2] [3]}. None of the entries supplies a single harmonized dataset that traces the same cohort of reports from initial report through verdict, so directly equating reporting rates to conviction percentages requires caution. The materials also do not provide confidence intervals, jurisdictional breakdowns, or longitudinal series that would show recent changes beyond the cited years ^{[1] [2] [3]}.

6. Multiple perspectives and potential agendas in the materials

The materials combine advocacy-statistics framing (emphasizing low accountability and incarceration counts) with policing-performance reporting (highlighting falling clearance rates) and foreign reporting on charging practices (UK data). Advocacy sources have an agenda to demonstrate systemic failure and drive reform ^[1], while crime-beat reporting can aim to hold institutions accountable by focusing on investigative breakdowns ^[2]. The presence of cross-national comparisons risks amplifying alarm without clarifying procedural differences; readers should note these differing emphases when interpreting the combined narrative ^{[1] [2] [3]}.

7. Bottom line and what’s missing for a definitive percentage

Based on these sources, the defensible statement is that only a small single-digit percentage of reported sexual assaults in the U.S. ultimately produce felony convictions and incarceration, with advocacy summaries translating to roughly 25–28 convictions/incarcerations per 1,000 reports and policing data showing only about one-third of investigations cleared in 2017 ^{[1] [2]}. For a precise, current national conviction percentage that traces individual reported cases through prosecution to verdict, one would need a longitudinal, case-level dataset linking reports to charging and conviction outcomes, which the provided materials do not supply. The sources together illuminate the problem but stop short of a single authoritative, up-to-date percent-of-reports-to-convictions figure ^{[1] [2] [3]}.