According to this website: https://www.rainn.org/statistics/criminal-justice-system,
out of every 1000 rapes, 994 perpetrators will walk free
Similar percentages are presented for other types of crimes as well, but I find it a bit strange to believe, since it is not about some failed state or anarchy, but about the US!
Is the above claim true?
//o\\ Work In Progress //o\\
(Preliminary) Conclusion: 4 of the 5 claims check out so far (with caveats based on imperfect data sets), based on referenced crime data provided by the DOJ and FBI. (Still working on the final claim)
This page links and discusses their sources and methods: About RAINN's statistics.
Let's break the graphic down into its individual components:
Claim 1: 31% of rapes are reported to the police (310 of 1000)
RAINN says this statistic is calculated by averaging the 5 most recent years of available data from the US DOJ's "Criminal Victimization" report. Let's see if that stacks up.
Here is what I found for "Percent of victimizations reported to police" for Rape/sexual assault (all links are PDFs):
Averaging these 5 values gives 30.4%, so the calculation seems accurate.
Nitpick: The "Rape/sexual assault" crime category in the DOJ reports is fairly broad (it includes attempted rape, other kinds of sexual assault, and even threats of rape), so this particular source doesn't differentiate between the reporting percentage of each of these smaller sub-groups (if there is any difference).
I found another (earlier) source that does distinguish between them, and the numbers aren't out of line. The BJS report "Rape and Sexual Assault: Reporting to Police and Medical Attention, 1992-2000" reports the following in Table 3:
31% still seems like a reasonable number.
Claim 2: 18% of reports lead to arrest (57 of 310)
This stat comes from the FBI National Incident-Based Reporting System, which collects crime data from states and local agencies.
This is my speculation, but they might have used the "Incidents Cleared by Offense Category, 2015" report for crimes in the category "Sex Offenses":
"Cleared by Arrests" / "Total incidents" works out to 17.6%, which is close to RAINN's figure.
Nitpick: What is a little unclear for this stat is whether the other column, "cleared by exceptional means" should count. According to the accompanying description, these cases were "cleared" (solved) in some other way:
When an incident is cleared by exceptional means, it was cleared in some other way than by arrest, i.e., the death of the offender, prosecution was declined for other than lack of probable cause, the offender was already in custody in another jurisdiction, the victim refused to cooperate in the prosecution, or the offender was a juvenile and the crime was handled without taking him/her into custody.
Some of these scenarios may be viewed as a "positive outcome" by the victim (if the offender is already in jail for another crime, for example), others would not. Strictly speaking, though, if they aren't prosecuted for this crime, the chart may be correct to exclude them (especially since we can't distinguish which is which).
Claim 3: 19% of arrests are referred to a prosecutor (11 of 57)
(Still working on this one, although this data does not appear to be in the FBI NIBRS data. In fact, I found a page that explicitly says that the FBI UCR program doesn't collect data on the number of persons who were prosecuted, convicted, and/or imprisoned.)
Claim 4: 64% of prosecutions lead to a felony conviction (7 of 11)
This one goes back to the BJS data, thanks for pinpointing the source, @BobTheAverage.
The Felony Defendants in Large Urban Counties report for 2009 (page 24, Table 21) shows a felony conviction rate of 57% for rape.
57% of 11 (in the chart) is 6.3, so rounding that up to 7 seems reasonable.
Nitpick: This report is for the 75 largest counties in the US, not for the entire US population. (This isn't cherry-picking, this report is the only one of this type available.) Clearly urban and rural counties will have different crime patterns; the question here is whether the rates of conviction and incarceration are similar, even if the volume is different.
Claim 5: 85% of felony convictions involve jail time (6 of 7)
From the same report (Page 29, Table 24), 89% of convictions for rape result in jail time.
This is very close to chart value of 85%.
Nitpick: (See nitpick on Claim 4)
This "answer" is too long for a comment, and is definitely incomplete. It is meant to supplement @BradC's answer, which is currently marked as a work in progress.
The analysis RAINN is doing appears to stitch together data from a variety of different sources. They list their sources, but do not include any indication of how they picked and processed their data. Although this is better than the average completely unsourced infographic, it is still frustratingly opaque. When the question was first posted, I spent a few frustrating hours researching this, and came to some of the same conclusions that @BradC did. I also found the following.
NCVS Data related to claim 1
Data from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) lumps rape and sexual assault together, and defines sexual assault as:
A wide range of victimizations, separate from rape or attempted rape. These crimes include attacks or attempted attacks generally involving unwanted sexual contact between victim and offender. Sexual assaults may or may not involve force and include such things as grabbing or fondling. Sexual assault also includes verbal threats.
RAINN takes these two together and reports it in their infographic simply as "rape." This seems seriously misleading; Rape includes things far more heinous than grabbing or fondling. I find it baffling that the NCVS does not report these separately.
Claim 4: 64% of prosecutions lead to a felony conviction (7 of 11)
This government report presents data on felony defendants in America's 75 largest counties. These counties contain large cities accounting for 37% of the total population, and are not nationally representative.
In 2009 in the 75 largest urban counties there were 412 felony rape defendants, of which 68% were convicted of something, 57% (235) were convicted of a felony, the rest a misdemeanor. The infographic claims that of the 11 cases referred to a prosecutor, 7 of them will result in a felony conviction. The two sources have a similar felony conviction rate; The difference could be explained by rounding errors in the 7 and 11 or it could be that RAINN took the average of several years of data. (Source: Table 21)
Claim 5: 85% of felony convictions are incarcerated (6 of 7)
According to the same source, 89% of convicted rapists are incarcerated. (Source: Table 24) This is very similar to the numbers presented by RAINN.
BJP Data related to claims 4 and 5 These statistics describe only residents of the biggest cities, 37% of the total population. Big cities and tiny towns have different culture, different police forces, and different patterns of crime. Although extrapolating data from big cities to the whole country is terrible analysis, I can't be sure that RAINN actually did this. The source is called out in RAINN's sources, and the numbers approximately match, but that is not conclusive.
Lack of a conclusion
After looking at all of this data, I still do not know what to think. The data sources RAINN looked through are credible and authoritative, but the sources use a variety of definitions, methodologies and sample populations. The infographic was an attempt to weave these threads of evidence into a clear cut story. After reviewing the evidence, I still believe the broad strokes of the story, but I am skeptical of details and specifics. I believe that a distressingly low number of rapes end in incarceration, but the final number could be very different from 6 out of 1000.
