Twenty-two years after establishing the nation’s first annual advocate-led case review of rape and sexual assault files at the Philadelphia Police Department’s Special Victims Unit, the Women’s Law Project announces the publication of a comprehensive case-review guide to facilitate implementation in other cities and towns across the country.
The Annual Advocate Sex Crime Case Review Guidebook: The Philadelphia Model is now available for download here. WLP Managing Attorney Terry L. Fromson and former Executive Director of WLP Carol E. Tracy co-authored the guidebook.
The case review, which has become known as the Philadelphia Model, is a tool to improve sex crime investigations and ensure they are done thoroughly and without bias. WLP wrote this detailed guidebook to the sex crime case review process to empower all advocates, citizens, and officials to hold police accountable to the brave survivors who choose to report and the communities they have sworn to serve.
The Case Review Guidebook traces the evolution of U.S. rape law in the context of racial, sex-based, and LGBTQ+ bias; describes how to conduct an effective advocate case review in plain language; and includes key contextual information such as instructions regarding how to find and analyze national and local crime data.
We understand that not every victim of rape will want to report to the police, but every person who chooses to report deserves a timely, fair, thorough, and unbiased investigation of their allegations. The investigation should be informed by both an awareness of the cultural history of bias against rape victims and current knowledge about the neurobiology of trauma and its effect on behavior and memory.
The Philadelphia Model has already been implemented in jurisdictions across Canada in the aftermath of a devastating news investigation into “unfounded” rape cases and adapted to United States jurisdictions by the U.S. Department of Justice. WLP attorneys have also consulted with many U.S. advocates and city officials who expressed interest in adopting the Philadelphia Model. We wrote this guidebook to facilitate and empower more advocates to implement an advocate-led case review.
Women’s Law Project is a public interest law center in Pennsylvania devoted to advancing and defending the rights of women, girls, and LGBTQ+ people in Pennsylvania and beyond. As a non-profit organization, we can not do this work without you. Please consider supporting our work.
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