When we say “crime is a social construction” we don’t mean that the harm done when someone is killed, robbed, or assaulted (including sexually assaulted) is subjective or all in your head.

We mean U.S. cops execute an unknown exactly but thousand-plus people per year, and it’s never murder; it’s a “good kill” or, with enormous public pressure, a “fire-able mistake”. We mean the cops, along with the courts and jails, seize wealth and possessions from hundreds of thousands of people per year, and it’s never robbery; it’s asset forfeitures, it’s citations, it’s fees. A person living in a tent under an overpass will not have anyone investigate a crime against them if someone stomps them and takes all their worldly and identifying possessions, especially since this is most likely to happen during a city-directed “sweep” and the stomping robber be a cop.

We mean cops and jailers assault (including sexually assault) millions of people every year, habitually, as well as the worst of them preying on children, sex workers, and others in vulnerable positions coerced into sex acts they cannot consent to. It’s never groping, it’s a “pat down”, it’s the TSA saying, “code red” e.g. “here comes a hot redhead to pull out of the airport line for more scrutiny.” It’s never rape; it’s a “cavity search”, it’s a “date” to get out of a ticket, it’s a coerced backseat sex act on a secluded road to avoid a report of a probation violation, it’s a women’s prison that needs Plan B in stock.

The harm is still real in all of these cases, but the social construction of crime means that those sorts of harms don’t count when we total up crime statistics, or maybe that sort of perpetrator and those sorts of victims don’t count.

“Without cops, what records would sexual assault victims have?” is asking the wrong question and assuming the wrong status quo.

Capitalism relies on a massive amount of propaganda to convince you that cops are fundamentally good guys just in need of some reform to finally be able to get rid of all the bad guys rather than what they are: a publicly-funded gang of liars, thieves, sexual predators, and killers who protect private property for richer people of the exact same sort. As illustrated above, a person is much more likely to be the victim of sexual violence or harassment by a law enforcement officer than to have the person who sexually assaulted them be caught and punished by cops and courts.

Yes, we do need there to be consequences for people who are abusive, but at this point, most folk are not even willing to stop inviting child molesters to Thanksgiving. They will say they want “all pedophiles hanged”, but then tell a 25-year-old woman she needs to forgive and move on from what her uncle or siblings did to her when she was a child. The cops do not care because society does not care about all kinds of harm or harm that happens to everyone.

As with what we call theft, what we call “rape”, “murder”, and “robbery” is a social construct. Not because being harmed isn’t actual harm, but because we only count some of these sorts of harms as crime depending on who is doing them and who to.