Forgoing Criminal Justice Assistance: The Non-Reporting of New Incidents of Abuse in a Court Sample of Domestic Violence Victims

摘要

This paper is part of a series of reports generated from the study of the Quincy District Court's (QDC) response to domestic violence. The focus of this paper is to examine the impact of case processing in Quincy District Court on the disclosure of re-victimization. Multivariate analysis was used to control for the impact of incident, victim, offender, and case processing characteristics. Those reporting no new incidents were included as a control group to insure that variables that distinguish re-reporters from non-reporters who reported a new incident are also distinguishied between those with no new incident. Findings suggest the importance of indicators of victim frustration with the criminal justice system. Offenders of women who do not report were no more violent, but had a history of drug problems as well as a history of harassment of the victim. This suggests that new approaches may be needed that target the unique characteristics of multi-problem offenders.