ABSTRACT
The article uses ratios of rape and homicide to explore the underpolicing of rape in U.S. cities. In doing so, I build on Yung’s (2014) rate-based model and identify a statistic (the c-value) that can be used to rapidly assess or rank the policing behaviors of different metropolitan departments. I apply this method to a finer scale analysis of district-level crime in the city of St. Louis, Missouri. When combined with demographic data in a geographic information system, results suggest that police in precincts serving majority black constituencies are more likely to undercount rape than their peers attached to precincts that serve constituencies with fewer blacks.
