(No) Spillovers in reporting domestic abuse to police

Abstract

We showcase the use of a spatio-temporal Hawkes-type point process to model the reporting of domestic abuse. Extending existing Hawkes models, we test for the existence of two spillover channels in crime victim reporting: 1. spillovers due to victims responding to other victim reports and 2. spillovers due to victims responding to police action. Despite well-documented spillover effects in other human behaviour, we find no evidence to support such effects in the reporting of domestic abuse.