The War on Crime and the War on Rape: The LEAA and Philadelphia WOAR, 1974–1984

Abstract

This article uses Philadelphia Women Organized Against Rape (WOAR) as a case study to examine the intertwining of the feminist movement against sexual violence and state crime control agencies during the 1970s “war on crime.” Law Enforcement Assistant Administration (LEAA) officials expected the anti-rape organizers they subsidized to promote police reporting to the victims they served. This sharply contracted the terrain of feminist anti-rape activism, particularly for women of color who declined police reporting. Lynn Moncrief, a self-described “Black radical feminist” hired by Philadelphia WOAR using LEAA funds, rejected the mandate to increase police reporting rates. Instead, she devoted her energies to remaking WOAR's praxis with Black women and girls at the center. While LEAA funding tethered the anti-rape movement to the rapidly expanding carceral state of the late twentieth century, the example of Lynn Moncrief and the Third World Caucus of Philadelphia WOAR shows that cooptation was never total.