Preventing recidivism has been a major thrust in the study of criminal justice and has become a central goal for public-private partnerships in states and localities. Overwhelmingly, recidivism research focuses on remedial actions for the people who commit crimes, rather than on victims.

In this context, a campus anti-sexual assault program that trains women to avoid becoming victims of crime presents a puzzling piece of otherwise good news. The Enhanced Assess, Acknowledge, Act (EAAA) sexual assault resistance education program underwent a randomized controlled trial—the “gold standard” of program evaluations—at three Canadian universities. The evaluation found that first-year undergraduate women who participated in EAAA were about half as likely as women in the control group to be raped in the 12 months after completing the program.

Much of the early research on why people commit sexual assault focused on convicted rapists, skewing the data in ways that obscured the transgressions that can occur simply when consent is not understood, and which have now been documented by countless women as part of the #MeToo campaign.

Programs like EAAA may empower women to use common-sense measures to protect themselves, but that should not be the only path to a world without sexual assault. We need to develop and rigorously evaluate what does and does not prevent the crime in the first place.

Read the full article by Meg Massey about sexual assault from the Urban Institute.