The Reporting-Service Gap in Intimate Partner Violence: Police Reporting, Victim-Service Receipt, and Dual Noncontact in the National Crime Victimization Survey, 1993–2023
Joonsung Kwon
Research on intimate partner violence (IPV) underreporting often treats police notification as the primary indicator of formal-system reach, leaving less clear whether incidents not reported to police include recorded receipt of help or advice from victim-service agencies. Using incident-level public-use data from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), 1993 to 2023, this study examines the joint distribution of police reporting and receipt of victim-service help or advice among IPV violent victimizations. The analytic sample included 7,672 incidents. A four-category outcome distinguished incidents involving no police report and no recorded victim-service receipt, police reporting only, victim-service receipt only, or both. Dual noncontact was defined at the incident level as no police report and no recorded receipt of victim-service help or advice. Survey-weighted estimates, design-adjusted confidence intervals, reporting-status contrasts, stated reasons for police nonreporting, and a design-based multinomial model described the two measured channels. In 2018 to 2023, 43.0% of IPV violent victimizations involved dual noncontact, 34.3% involved police reporting only, 7.2% involved victim-service receipt only, and 15.5% involved both. Recorded victim-service receipt was more common among police-reported incidents (31.2%, 95% CI [24.9, 38.2]) than among unreported incidents (14.3%, 95% CI [9.9, 20.3]). This reporting-status difference did not vary significantly across the six periods,