Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Police Reporting for Partner Violence in the National Crime Victimization Survey and Survivor-Led Interpretation

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.