This article examines the coverage of the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) as of 2013. We use NIBRS, Uniform Crime Reports (UCR), and Supplementary Homicide Reports to assess the population coverage and index crime coverage of NIBRS. We also examine the correspondence of crime rates between the UCR and agencies that do and do not participate in NIBRS. We found that NIBRS covers 29.3% of the U.S. population and 28% of UCR index crimes. We also found that the crime rates in NIBRS jurisdictions are appreciably lower than jurisdictions that do not participate in NIBRS. As of 2013, therefore, NIBRS data are not representative of the U.S. population, crime counts, or crime rates.

The adoption of arrest as the preferred response in incidents of intimate partner violence has generally been welcomed, but it has not come without unintended consequences. Foremost among these has been an increase in dual arrest, the situation where both parties to an incident are arrested. To address this concern, many states have enacted primary aggressor laws which mandate that officers determine who is the primary aggressor in the incident. To date, no longitudinal national study has been conducted on the impact of these laws. Using a dataset comprising 10 years of National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS) data (2000-2009) from 5,481 jurisdictions in 36 states and the District of Columbia, the authors examine the impact of primary aggressor laws in reducing the prevalence of dual arrests. Taking into account such factors as seriousness of offense, the authors found that the existence of primary aggressor laws does appear to result in officer reluctance to make any arrest. In addition, though these laws do result in a reduction in dual arrests, this reduction was not statistically significant. This is undoubtedly a result of inter-state variation in implementation as well as variations in statutory framework. In addition, these laws were observed to have a disparate effect both on White and non-White and heterosexual and same-sex couples. The policy implications of these findings are discussed.

Research on the impact of race on the likelihood an incident of intimate partner violence will result in arrest is mixed. Some scholars find racial minorities to be at lower risk of arrest, some find racial minorities to be at higher risk of arrest, and some find no difference in arrest likelihood based on race of the involved parties. Using a data set comprising 10 years of National Incident-Based Reporting System data (2000–2009) from 5,481 jurisdictions in 36 states and the District of Columbia, the authors examine the impact of victim and offender race on the likelihood of arrest and dual arrest. Accounting for such factors as seriousness of offense, location, and sex, the authors found that there are significant differences in the likelihood of arrest and dual arrest based on the victim and offender racial dyad. Generally, regardless of offender race, incidents with a White victim evince the highest likelihood of arrest, while interracial incidents involving a Black offender and White victim evince the lowest likelihood of dual arrest. Research and policy implications of these findings are discussed.

This paper analyses some of the activities of a community development group connected to a very poor neighbourhood in Dublin, Ireland within the context of anti-poverty discourses and types of targeted funding generated by the European Union. Community development groups and discourses are saturated with terms such as the 'social market', 'inclusion' and 'community' that T his paper represents our attempt to make sense of an ethnographic situation whose spatial and conceptual boundaries were (and remain) frustratingly difficult to demarcate. We are trying to approach ethnographically the relationships between terms like power, space, discourse and subjectivity. At base, we are interested in the experience of poverty in the midst of growing wealth. In this context, we are confronting a revived 'culture of poverty' argument-a means of connecting unhappy social and market outcomes to perceived deficits within populations and individuals-but rather than simply despairing of the return of this social science revenant, we are searching for some way of making this social fact one of the objects of our analysis. As part of this process, we argue that any ethnography of poverty in the modern state has to have some sense of policy initiatives and institutional arrangements that recognize and regulate it, not as a simple container around field data, but as objects that need to be problematized as part of the field experience. Perhaps most importantly, this paper also represents our attempt to take seriously our consultants attempts to theorize their own situations, which, at the end of the argument, we suggest might be a way forward in understanding some of these issues.

Despite concern, little research has been conducted on whether victims in same-sex relationships receive disparate treatment from law enforcement. Utilizing 2000 through 2009 National Incident-Based Reporting System data, the authors examine the police response to incidents involving same-sex and heterosexual couples in 2,625,753 cases across 5,481 jurisdictions in 36 states and Washington, D.C. Results show that incidents with same-sex couples are less likely to result in arrest, but far more likely to result in dual arrests, in most incident configurations. Racial effects were also observed. The policy implications of these findings are discussed with the need for broad-based training highlighted.