Reporting violence to the police: Predictors through the life course

Abstract

Scholarship focused on factors that influence police reporting has a long history in the literature. Yet we lack a complete understanding of how these factors differentially influence reporting by age. PurposeThis paper aims to enhance our understanding of underreporting by investigating the relationship between reporting and age, and how this relationship differs by crime type. The study further investigates whether a variety of characteristics differentially influence reporting across the life course. Finally, the study asks how the nature of reporting varies by the victim's age. MethodsNational Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) data were used to assess whether there are age-related differences in the factors influencing the rate and nature of police reporting. ResultsThe findings suggest that the rate of reporting differs by crime type but that it generally increases throughout the life course. The influence of incident, victim, and offender characteristics on police reporting varies, not simply between juveniles and adults, but also between young and older adults. The proportion of incidents reported to police by the victim his/herself also continues to increase with age. ConclusionsThis suggests that disparities in police reporting cannot be reduced to juvenile-adult comparisons and should be studied across the full life course.