Perceived trauma, physical injuries, and the efficacy of Back's theory of law: reporting assaults to the police

Bachman, RonetExisting research focuses extensively on victim reporting of crime by using Donald Black’s (1976) behavior of law framework, but there has been little research that has focused on the influence of victims’ perceptions of trauma on police reporting. After controlling indicators of morphology and stratification as articulated by Black’s behavior of law framework, and crime seriousness indicators as presented by Gottfredson and Hindelang, this paper examines whether victims’ perception of trauma influence the likelihood that assault victimizations will be reported to police. Using recent data from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), which now queries victims about the emotional and physical trauma they experienced after an incident, models indicate that physical injuries that require medical care are the most significant factors related to an incident being reported to police. Although significant at the bivariate level, multivariate logistic regression models indicate that victims’ perceptions of overall trauma retained only marginal significance after controlling for the other variables.University of Delaware, Department of Sociology and Criminal JusticeM.A