Citation

Holliday CN, Kahn G, Thorpe RJ, Shah R, Hameeduddin Z, Decker MR. J. Racial Ethn. Health Disparities 2019; ePub(ePub): ePub.

Affiliation

Center for Public Health & Human Rights, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD, USA.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1007/s40615-019-00675-9

PMID

31828687

Abstract

Despite compromising women's health and safety, intimate partner violence (IPV) is among the most underreported crimes, and our understanding of factors that drive police reporting by race/ethnicity is underdeveloped. The purpose of this study is to examine racial/ethnic differences in self-reporting IPV to police. Race/ethnicity-stratified models identified predictors of reporting IPV to police among recent, female survivors (n = 898) in the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS; 2011-15). Focus groups (n = 3) with recent survivors (n = 19) in Baltimore, MD (2018), contextualized results. Black women in the NCVS were twice as likely to report IPV to police relative to White women (AOR = 2.05, 95% CI: 1.01-4.15). In race/ethnicity-stratified models, police reporting significantly increased with increasing age between 18 and < 35 years (AOR = 1.18, 95% CI: 1.05-1.33) for Black women, and with IPV-related injury for Black (AOR = 2.51, 95% CI: 1.10-5.71) and Hispanic women (AOR = 2.87, 95% CI: 1.22-6.71); Hispanics with less than a high school education were least likely to report (AOR = 0.24, 95% CI: 0.07-0.91). Focus groups explained racial/ethnic influences on reporting including a culture of silence and discrimination, socioeconomic status, and social desirability. We identified influences on reporting IPV to police that vary by race/ethnicity using national data in context to an urban environment.

RESULTS demonstrate the need to enhance equity in survivors' health and public safety through training and organizational change.

Language: en

Keywords

Community health; Intimate partner violence; Police; Race