The current article is intended to demonstrate the advantages of prioritizing an analysis of court caseload processing for a given type of crime and proceeding to a comparison of the results obtained from empirical studies in different countries. The article draws on a study I performed on rape cases tried by the court system in Campinas, São Paulo State, and the study by Gary LaFree on rape cases in the United States, based on data in Indianapolis, Indiana. The comparative analysis of determinants of victims' and law enforcement agencies' decisions concerning the pursuit of legal action proved to be productive, even when comparing two different systems of justice. This allowed greater knowledge of how the Brazilian criminal justice system operates, both in its capacity to identify, try, and punish sex offenders, and in terms of the importance it ascribes to formal legal rules in trying rape cases, in comparison to the American criminal justice system.
rape; sexual assault; comparative criminal justice; comparative law; criminal justice caseload
