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Community Context, Weapon Use, and Victim Injury: A Multi-Level Study of Offense Severity in the Sexual Victimization of Women

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Abstract

Prior studies of the sexual assault of women suggest the importance of weapon use, victim/offender familiarity, and offender intoxication as factors that contribute to offense severity in the form of victim injury. This body of literature is, however, inconsistent and limited insofar as it relies heavily on micro-level analysis of geographically limited samples of survivors and offenders. This study contributes to the literature through application of Agnew’s General Strain Theory and race-specific hierarchical generalized linear modeling to incident-level data from the National Incident-Based Reporting System in conjunction with contextual-level data from cities in which the incidents are nested. Our findings suggest weapon use, victim-offender familiarity, and offender intoxication each contribute to offense severity, but these relationships are conditioned by strain-inducing community characteristics.

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Notes

  1. These cases include incidents of forcible sodomy, forcible fondling, and sexual assault with an object.

  2. The purpose of this age cutoff is two-fold. First, the literature has established the need to delineate between offense typologies (i.e., extra-familial child molestation, sexual assault of women, etc.) (Dickey et al., 2002; Hanson & Bussiere, 1998). Second, and consistent with prior research (e.g., Leclerc & Cale, 2015; Stermac et al., 1998), this age cutoff coincides with physical maturity and increased participation in activities that expose young women to strained males in the community.

  3. Weapon use included the use of firearms, knives, blunt objects, personal weapons (hands, feet, teeth, etc.), and other weapons. Statistical models delineating between these weapon categories produced substantively similar results.

  4. Reliability estimates for all models exceed .66, indicating considerable variation between cities in the probability of weapon use and victim injury.

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  1. Department of Social, Cultural, and Justice Studies, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, 308 Brock Hall, Dept. 2102, 615 McCallie Ave, Chattanooga, TN, 37403, USA

    Rick Dierenfeldt

  2. Rehabilitation and Human Services Program, Penn State Wilkes-Barre, P.O. Box PSU, Lehman, PA, 18627-0217, USA

    Melisa Naylor

  3. Administration of Justice Program, Penn State Wilkes-Barre, P.O. Box PSU, Lehman, PA, 18627-0217, USA

    Samantha Bilardi

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Dierenfeldt, R., Naylor, M. & Bilardi, S. Community Context, Weapon Use, and Victim Injury: A Multi-Level Study of Offense Severity in the Sexual Victimization of Women. Am J Crim Just 44, 788–811 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12103-018-9455-5

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