Essay On False Reporting

False reporting is an afflicting issue that is universal to crimes, many times regardless of the crimes’ nature, the crimes’ location, and the crimes’ severity. The laws in place in many states in the United States of America include a statute on the false reporting of a crime and alleged criminal activity to law enforcement. In the current statute held by the state of Minnesota it states what constitutes as a false report and that a false report is that if anyone who knowingly informs a law enforcement officer of a crime that has been committed or gives information knowing that it is false in the intent that the officer will then act upon that information is guilty of a gross misdemeanor. (MN, 609.505) If an individual that is accused of false reporting is found guilty of this gross misdemeanor the perpetrator can face a penalty of up to 1 year’s imprisonment and a $1,000 fine. This same penalty of imprisonment and fine is true for the crime of …show more content…
It is easy to come to believe with how much coverage there is over false reports of rape and sexual assault that the rate of false reporting’s for these types of violent crimes is higher than that of other violent crimes. However, out of every 1,000 rape crimes that are committed only an average of 100 are reported to law enforcement and out of that 100 reports only 2-5% is found to be a false report. This is the same rate of false reporting and other violent crimes. Philip N.S. Rumney of Sheffield Hallam University reviewed a large array of literature on the subject of false reporting and found that the estimates found within these documents ranged from 1.5% all the way to 90% of cases. (Rumney) One would not make the same argument of a 90% false report rate for murder or other crimes considered to be especially