Neil was one of the first to report on Sarah Palin's policy as Mayor of Wasilla, AK, to make rape victims pay for their own rape kits - the only police organization in Alaska to do so. The amount of money Wasilla's police chief claimed was being saved has bothered me quite a bit, but I've only figured it out now.
If Wasilla had to pay $1200 per kit, and if their extra expenses from purchasing them only turned out to be $5000/yr, that would work out to 4.2 reported rapes each year. Which, given Wasilla's population at the time, would mean a per capita rate of approximately .83 per 1,000 residents. Alaska's incidence is .76 per 1,000, while the US rate is .30 per 1,000. Or to put it another way, if Todd Palin had his way and Alaska became a sovereign nation, of all the other nations in the world, only South Africa would have a higher incidence of rape, and Wasilla even manages to beat the rest of Alaska.
Wasilla does have its crime statistics online for the years 1994 to 2005. The problem is that they have a category for sexual assault, but not rape specifically. However, we can still use the numbers they provide. In 2000, the year Governor Knowles signed the legislation requiring the government to pay for rape kits, Wasilla reports seven incidents of sexual assault. If all of them were rapes, that would give them a rate of approximately 1.4 rapes per 1,000 - higher, if you remember the nations table, than even South Africa.
Therefore, our worst-case scenario regarding the prevalence of rape in Wasilla for the year 2000 is 1.4 rapes per 1,000 residents, while our best-case scenario puts it around .83 per 1,000. Two years later there were 16 reported sexual assaults, which puts that rate at 3.2 per 1,000.
All of the above to say, what the hell is going on in Wasilla?
I felt safer in south LA less than one month after the 1992 riots than I ever would in that town.
