Police notification and police response behaviors to physical assault victims: a focus on geographic context
Date
2017
Authors
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
National level data indicates that while crime victims do report crime to the
police, the number of crime victimizations that are reported is less than half (Baumer
& Lauritsen, 2010). Additionally, scholarship on rural criminology has been gaining
ground, but rural crime in general ranks among the least studied problems in
criminology throughout the twentieth century (Donnermeyer, 2012). This research
connects the literature of victimization reporting, police response behavior, and rural
criminology, in an analysis to understand rural and urban differences in the police
notification behavior of physical assault victims and police response behavior to
physical assaults. Using the incident-level extract file of the NCVS for 1992-2012 this
research has an n-size of 23,729. There are two main dependent outcomes: police
notification of physical assault and police response behaviors to physical assault.
These outcomes are measured through six dependent variables to examine the research
questions (1) Does geography have an effect on the likelihood that victims of assault
will notify the police? (2) Does geography have an effect on police response behaviors
in the form of time to arrive on the scene and decision to arrest? Findings indicate
differences between urban and rural areas in the probability of physical assault
notification and the police response behaviors. These findings are understood through
Black’s (1974, 1976) theory of the mobilization of law. Limitations and avenues for
further research are discussed.
Description
Keywords
Social sciences, Physical assault victims, Rural criminology