Abstract
Despite the increased research attention given to rape and violence against women, little is known about rape co-occurrence, or rape incidents that involve another crime. Although previous research has found certain incident characteristics increase the likelihood that a victim reports her rape to police and that the offender is arrested and prosecuted, the relationship between co-occurrence and these responses is unknown. Given this gap in the literature, the main goal of the present research is to provide an initial understanding of rape co-occurrence and its effect on victim reporting and police clearance. To explore these issues, this study uses two national data sources that collect the requisite incident-level information: the National Crime Victimization Survey and the Uniform Crime Reporting Program’s National Incident-Based Reporting System. Few rapes are found to co-occur with other crimes. When rapes do occur with other crimes, though, they are more likely than solo-occurring rapes to involve weapons, strangers, additional injury to the victim, and multiple offenders. Rapes that co-occur also are more likely to be reported to police and cleared by police than rapes that occur with no other crimes.
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Notes
One exception is Sample’s (2006) recent study of sex offenders who kill their victims; however, her study of Illinois data is limited to the co-occurring crime of murder.
It is important to emphasize that rape itself is an injury. This article uses “victim injury” to refer to any injury sustained in addition to the rape.
For more information on the hierarchy rule and other aspects of the NCVS, see Rennison and Rand (2007). The use of the NCVS data without the hierarchy rule was accomplished with the helpful assistance of Michael Rand.
When a ranking scheme is used (as is the case for BJS publications), an algorithm translates the binary attributes of the incident collected by the Incident Report into TOCs; and only the most serious crime is counted, if more than one crime occurs in the incident. In addition to a personal crime (like rape), these binary attributes might identify property crimes like burglary, which are attributable only to the household respondent in order to avoid duplicate crime counts. By opting not to use a ranking scheme, the present study allows for the identification of all victimizations (personal or property) that may have occurred during the rape incident whether these crimes were ultimately attributed to only that victim or to the household respondent.
Only offenses that occurred in 2002 are included in these counts and used in the analyses reported in this study. The NIBRS public-use files do contain crimes that were not committed during that given year since the data files includes the full record on any criminal incident for which any activity was reported during that year. For example, the full record for a rape committed in 2001 with an arrest in 2002 will be included in both the 2001 and 2002 NIBRS public-use files.
In addition to collecting initial information about clearance, NIBRS data can be updated for a period of three years after the offense. Unlike the summary system and the SHR, NIBRS data are submitted in computerized form with unique incident numbers to allow incident-level updating (Addington 2004).
In addition, three agencies from Kentucky and one from the District of Columbia also submitted NIBRS data. In the District of Columbia, only the Metro Transit Police report to NIBRS data (BJS 2004). One reason for this situation is the fact that a few states do not have a state-level UCR program (Maltz 1999). In these cases and under special circumstances, the FBI certifies individual agencies (BJS 1997).
The term “clearance” is used rather than the more specific term “arrest”. This terminology parallels the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s practice of considering a crime cleared or “solved” for crime reporting purposes if there has been either an arrest or activity constituting clearance by exceptional means (FBI 2004b). Clearance by exceptional means refers to situations where a suspect has been identified, but circumstances beyond the agency’s control prevent an arrest such as the death of the suspect. Readers interested in further details about NIBRS clearance are directed to Addington (2006).
In different victim–offender comparisons, two were stronger predictors of clearance: (1) intimate partners as compared to strangers (OR = 2.0) and (2) intimate partners as compared to unknown relationships (OR = 1.7).
Other differences observed in the two models are may be due to data collection variations. For example, in the NCVS model, age is not a significant predictor of co-occurrence; but in the NIBRS model, age has a small but positive effect (i.e., older victims are more likely to experience co-occurrence). One reason may be attributed to the inclusion of victims under 12 in the NIBRS data.
It should also be noted that the two datasets have different coverage, which may play a role. The NCVS is a nationally representative sample while NIBRS does not cover the entire nation and excludes cities over 1 million in population.
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Acknowledgements
Authors are listed alphabetically but contributed equally to the paper. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Fifty-eighth Annual Meeting of the American Society of Criminology, Los Angeles. The authors thank Editor David McDowall and the anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments and constructive feedback on an earlier version of this manuscript.
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Appendix A
Appendix A
Coding and frequencies of outcome and predictor variables, 1993–2004 NCVS & 2002 NIBRS female rape victims
Variable | Coding | Frequencies (%) | |
|---|---|---|---|
NCVS | NIBRS | ||
Outcome variables | |||
Rape co-occurrence | 1 = Co-occurrence | 16.9 | 6.3 |
0 = Rape only | 83.1 | 93.7 | |
Reported to police | 1 = Reported | 32.2 | n/a |
0 = Not reported | 66.6 | ||
Unknown/missing | 1.2 | ||
Rape clearance | 1 = Cleared | n/a | 35.8 |
0 = Not cleared | 64.2 | ||
Aggravated rape characteristics | |||
Weapons | Firearm | 3.3 | 1.7 |
Knife | 3.3 | 2.0 | |
Other weapon | 0.2 | 66.9 | |
No weapon* | 86.4 | 22.9 | |
Unknown weapon | 6.8 | 6.5 | |
Victim–offender relationship | Intimate partner* | 26.1 | 11.0 |
Otherwise known | 44.7 | 62.4 | |
Stranger | 23.3 | 9.3 | |
Unknown/missing | 5.9 | 17.3 | |
Multiple offenders | Only one offender* | 89.2 | 89.8 |
More than one offender | 7.3 | 10.2 | |
Unknown/missing | 3.5 | n/a | |
Injury | No injury* | 80.3 | n/a |
Serious injury | 2.4 | ||
Minor injury | 17.4 | ||
Victim characteristics | |||
Age | Continuous | ||
(NCVS = 12 or older) | Median = 22 | Median = 19.5 | |
(NIBRS = all age groups) | years | years | |
Race | 0 = Non-White | 29.4 | 20.0 |
1 = White | 70.6 | 76.9 | |
Unknown/missing | n/a | 3.1 | |
Marital status | Married* | 12.2 | n/a |
Never married | 58.8 | ||
Widowed | 0.9 | ||
Divorced | 16.0 | ||
Separated | 11.3 | ||
Unknown/missing | 0.7 | ||
Household income | Less than $5,000 | n/a | |
$5,000–$7,499 | |||
$7,500–$9,999 | |||
$10,000–$12,499 | |||
$12,500–$14,999 | |||
$15,000–$17,499 | |||
$17,500–$19,999 | Median = $20,000–$24,999 | ||
$20,000–$24,999 | |||
$25,000–$29,999 | |||
$30,000–34,999 | |||
$35,000–$39,999 | |||
$40,000–$49,999 | |||
$50,000–$74,999 | |||
$75,000 and over | |||
Unknown/missing | 10.6 | ||
Homeownership | 0 = Rented | 61.2 | n/a |
1 = Owned | 38.8 | ||
Offender characteristics | |||
Race | Non-White* | 29.9 | 28.5 |
White | 62.6 | 60.5 | |
Group of different races | 1.7 | n/a | |
Unknown/missing | 5.9 | 11.1 | |
Age | Under 18* | 8.2 | 20.8 |
18–29 | 41.9 | 31.6 | |
Over 30 | 38.1 | 33.8 | |
Group of different ages | 2.6 | n/a | |
Unknown/missing | 9.2 | 13.8 | |
Incident characteristics | |||
Home location | 0 = non-Home | 56.0 | 28.0 |
1 = Home | 44.0 | 72.0 | |
Presence of third party | No others present* | 75.8 | n/a |
Third party present | 19.3 | ||
Unknown/missing | 4.9 | ||
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Addington, L.A., Rennison, C.M. Rape Co-occurrence: Do Additional Crimes Affect Victim Reporting and Police Clearance of Rape?. J Quant Criminol 24, 205–226 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10940-008-9043-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10940-008-9043-9