Crime & Delinquency: Volume 60, Number 1
By: Ji Hyon Kang and James P. Lynch
This article examines the impact of victim—offender relationships on the willingness of the victim to call the police in situations pertaining to family violence and whether or not those rates are different depending on the life stage of the victim. The article puts the victim and offenders in three categories: children (adult or young), spouse, and parent. The roles that each family member plays may affect their willingness to call the police because some hold more power, experience and authority than others as well as different cognition patterns. They found that the relationship and age does affect reporting decision. If the offender is the spouse or child, the likelihood of the victim reporting family violence is higher. However, the results showed that reporting rates are not significant different the three age groups. However the results were inconsistent with their three hypotheses.
The articles research question was: Does victim – offender relationships and life stages affect the willingness to call the police in incidents of family violence? The type of data they used was reports of acts, behavior, or events and the data collection methods were surveys and
public and private records. I liked their research and think they did a good job because they touched on family abuse from different angles than what people usually hear about. However, all three of their hypotheses were not true which is interesting. I think my classmates would like
to hear about the rates of the less talked about family abuse relationships.