Ecological considerations in victim reporting to the police

A review of recent criminological literature suggests that different systems of social control operate across the urban-rural dimension. Specifically, it is expected that victims in urban areas will report crimes to the police at a higher rate than victims in surburban and rural areas. Moreover, it is anticipated that urban, suburban, and rural victims will have different reasons for not reporting the crime. In this paper these issues are examined empirically using the National Crime Survey victimization data. These data show that, contrary to theoretical expectations, the extent of victim reporting does not vary across the urban-rural dimension for the crimes of rape, robbery, assault, and personal larceny. Characteristics of the offense, notably seriousness, are shown to be more important in victim reporting than the extent of urbanization. In addition, these data indicate that victim residence in conjunction with type of crime and victim-offender relationship has an influence on the reasons selected by victims for not reporting the crime to the police.     

Reporting to the police in western nations: A theoretical analysis of the effects of social context

One of the most consistent findings in empirical studies using victimization data is that the decision to report victimization to the police is determined in large part by the seriousness of the crime. The police will be notified more often of crimes that involve more serious injury or greater monetary loss. These findings, however, may be due to the fact that most studies on reporting have been conducted using victimization surveys that devote a great deal of attention to the crime event and victim characteristics and much less to the social context of that event. As a result, influences on reporting operating at the neighborhood, jurisdiction, or nation level have been neglected. The aim of this paper is to bring social context into the discourse on reporting to the police by presenting a much more inclusive model of crime reporting. In addition, the influence of four aspects of macro-level social context on reporting are tested—the perceived competence of the police, institutionalization of insurance business, norm of conformity, and level of individualism—by merging incident-level data from the International Crime Victims Survey (ICVS) for 16 Western industrialized countries with nation-level data from various sources. Hierarchical logistic modeling is used to analyze the nested data. The perceived competence of the police has a positive effect on whether property crimes are reported.     

Applications of crime seriousness information in police departments

This article describes the use of crime seriousness information in police operations. It is based on a project at the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department in which eight weeks of crime information were coded using the Sellin-Wolfgang seriousness scale. Statistics were then derived which quantified the seriousness of the various categories of crimes. Several applications were investigated based on the crime seriousness data. These included: (1) case assignment to detectives, (2) allocation of patrol personnel, and (3) determination of the size and location of patrol beats. Areas for future research are presented involving the use of crime seriousness data.     

The stalking victim's decision to contact the police: A test of Gottfredson and Gottfredson's theory of criminal justice decision making

There is a significant body of research exploring the reporting behaviors of crime victims. Much of this literature has focused on specific types of victimization (e.g., sexual assault) and the correlates of victim reporting. Recently, the crimes of stalking and cyberstalking have received empirical attention; however, few studies have examined the reporting behaviors of victims of these crimes. Using the theoretical framework proposed by Gottfredson and Gottfredson (1988), the current study explored how offense seriousness, the victim-offender relationship, and the prior record of the offender influenced a victim's decision to contact the police. Data were drawn from the 2006 stalking supplement to the National Crime Victimization Survey, which examined stalking in the United States. Results offered support to Gottfredson and Gottfredson (1988) and highlighted the significance of understanding the reporting behaviors for this sample of crime victims. Differences in reporting for victims of stalking and cyberstalking were also examined.     

被害人有过错的故意杀人罪的死刑裁量研究——从被害与加害的关系切入

故意杀人罪是最典型的有被害人的犯罪。被害人加害在先引起他人加害 ,或被害人激化矛盾引起他人加害属于被害人有过错的故意杀人罪。在故意杀人罪死刑裁量中 ,被害人的过错是酌定从轻处罚情节。司法解释确立了“被害人一方有明显过错或对矛盾激化负有直接责任的故意杀人罪 ,一般不应判处死刑立即执行”的规则 ,但在司法实践中对被告人量刑时往往不予考虑。为了减少和限制故意杀人罪的死刑适用 ,在立法上有必要将被害人的过错这一酌定情节法定化。     

Violent Street Crime Versus Harmful White-Collar Crime: A Comparison of Perceived Seriousness and Punitiveness

Recent studies have challenged traditional wisdom regarding public apathy about white-collar crime by revealing equal or greater perceived seriousness of these offenses among respondents relative to traditional crime. Nevertheless, subjects in those studies were generally asked to contrast white-collar crime scenarios with a non-violent street crime baseline vignette. Perhaps a violent street crime would have invited lower perceived seriousness for the white-collar offenses. Participants in the present study were asked to (1) read vignettes describing violent street crimes and physically harmful white-collar crimes, (2) compare their seriousness, and (3) determine appropriate sanctions. Subjects perceived the violent crime scenarios presented to them to be more serious than the harmful white-collar crime vignettes. Further, they were less punitive toward white-collar offenders compared with street criminals. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

WHAT IS THE PERCEIVED SERIOUSNESS OF CRIMES?

Although criminologists have measured the perceived seriousness of offenses for decades, there is no consensus on the meaning of seriousness, nor is there clear evidence as to what individuals have in mind when they rate the seriousness of crimes. Seriousness judgments could reflect normative evaluations of offenses (i.e., their wrongfulness) or factual judgments about their harmfulness to victims. Survey data from Dallas residents show that the two dimensions are distinct and that conventional classes of crime (personal, property, public order) systematically differ on the two dimensions. Where crimes are perceived to be more wrong than harmful, seriousness mirrors wrongfulness. Where crimes are perceived to be more harmful than wrong, harmfulness predominates. A substantial minority of respondents, however, did not perceive differences in the moral gravity of crimes, judging the seriousness of crimes solely on the basis of harmfulness. These and other findings indicate that seriousness judgments are more structured and complex than commonly supposed and that conventional measures of seriousness, when applied to substantive problems, may mask or obscure distinct mechanisms of evaluation.     

FUNDING COMMUNITY POLICING TO REDUCE CRIME: HAVE COPS GRANTS MADE A DIFFERENCE?*

Research Summary: This research examines how funding from the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS), has affected violent and property crime rates in the United States from 1995 to 1999. Drawing on six years of panel data, we examine the effects of three types of awards made by COPS to 6,100 law enforcement agencies serving more than 145 million citizens. We estimate their impact on crime reduction over time in jurisdictions receiving funding and controlling for baseline levels of crime, socioeconomic characteristics, city size, and population diversity and mobility. Our analyses suggest that COPS hiring and innovative grant programs have resulted in significant reductions in local crime rates in cities with populations greater than 10,000 for both violent and nonviolent offenses. Multivariate analysis shows that in cities with populations greater than 10,000, an increase in one dollar of hiring grant funding per resident contributed to a corresponding decline of 5.26 violent crimes and 21.63 property crimes per 100,000 residents. Similarly, an increase in one dollar of innovative grant funding per resident has contributed to a decline of 12.93 violent crimes and 45.53 property crimes per 100,000 persons. In addition, the findings suggest that COPS grants have had no significant negative effect on violent and property crime rates in cities with less than 10,000 population. Policy Implications: The findings of this study imply that COPS program funding to medium‐ and large‐size cities has been an effective force in reducing both violent and property crime. Federal government grants made directly to law enforcement agencies to hire additional officers and promote innovations may be an effective way to reduce crime on a national scale.     

Religious Motivated Hate Crimes: Reporting to Law Enforcement and Case Outcomes

Relative to non-bias motivated crimes, hate crimes have much graver consequences for victims and their community. Despite the large increase in religious hate crimes over the past decade relative to all other hate crime, little is known about these types of crimes and the factors associated with both reporting to law enforcement and case outcomes. Utilizing the National Crime Victimization Survey and National Incident-Based Reporting System datasets, this study examines the relationship between victim, offender, and incident characteristics on reporting to law enforcement and case outcomes. Most religious hate crimes are not reported (41.3 %) in part due to perceptions of law enforcement’s perceived response. Of the violent incidents that are reported, the vast majority do not result in the arrest of an offender (22.2 %). Whereas only a small number of variables related to the seriousness of the offense are associated with both reporting and arrest, these exhibited large effect sizes.     

Having a Bad Month: General Versus Specific Effects of Stress on Crime

We examine whether particular types of stress are related to particular types of crime or whether all types of stress are related to all types of crime. Our estimates are based on analyses of within-individual change over a 36 month period among recently incarcerated offenders. We find that assault is most strongly related to family stress, suggesting that conflicts between family members lead to assault. Economic crimes (property crimes and selling illicit drugs) are most clearly related to financial stress, suggesting that these crimes often reflect attempts to resolve financial problems. On the other hand, crime is generally unrelated to stress from illness/injury, death, and work. The results support the idea that criminal behavior is a focused response to specific types of problems rather than a general response to stress. They are more consistent with explanations that focus on perceived rewards and costs (e.g., the rational-choice approach) than with explanations that portray negative affect as a generalized impetus toward violence or crime (e.g., frustration aggression approaches).     

RACIAL ANIMOSITY AND INTERRACIAL CRIME*

The primary objective of this study is to determine the effect of a victim's race on the likelihood of him or her being seriously injured during the commission of an interracial crime. We also assess the probability of a homicide occurring during an interracial crime. A multilevel city analysis shows that black offenders are no more apt than white offenders to injure their victims seriously during an interracial robbery or rape. A black offender also does not have a greater proclivity to kill his or her victim during the commission of an interracial crime. Some evidence suggests that white victims are more likely than black victims to suffer serious physical harm during an aggravated assault. Results also reveal that contextual factors related to racial animosity, such as residential segregation, white‐to‐black economic inequality, and black‐to‐white unemployment, fail to have any moderating effect on either the severity of victim injury or the likelihood of a homicide occurring during an interracial crime. Overall, the results generated in this study tend to cast doubt on the validity of racial animosity theory. Our findings also lead us to question the veracity of the oftenmade claim that black‐on‐white crimes are punished more severely because these types of offenses are somehow more heinous in circumstance. At least in regard to serious victim injury and victim death, black‐on‐white crime is no more violent than white‐on‐black crime.     

Constructing an index of officially recorded crime: The use of confirmatory factor analysis

Researchers using officially reported crime statistics must frequently combine rates of individual crimes into a single composite. The most popular composite is the FBI Crime Index, which is the sum of the seven Part I crimes; alternatives include forming separate indices for personal and property crimes and weighting the crime categories by their seriousness before summing them. In this paper we construct crime composites through the use of confirmatory factor analysis methods. The results suggest that the measurement assumptions of conventional crime indices are problematic and demonstrate how more satisfactory alternatives can be developed with confirmatory factor analysis techniques.     

Modelling Criminal Justice System Costs by Offence

This paper illustrates how to estimate criminal justice system costs by offence type. Criminal justice system costs are all the costs the authorities incur to prevent and investigate crime, prosecute criminals, impose sentences, and take care of victims and offenders. There are two approaches: the break-down and the bottom-up approaches. The break-down approach decomposes the aggregate budget into smaller pieces. The bottom-up approach multiplies known costs per activity by volumes for each activity and offence type. Both approaches can be combined with two types of estimates: incidence-based and prevalence-based estimates. An incidence-based estimate identifies all costs attributable to crimes committed or processed in a specified period regardless of whether these costs exceed this time period. A prevalence-based estimate identifies all costs incurred in a specified period regardless of when the crime was committed or processed. This paper looks at the differences between the two approaches and the two estimates and indicates which combination works best depending on the type of analysis and the availability of data. The methodologies are illustrated using examples from The Netherlands. These examples show that the availability of reliable data is crucial. The more assumptions have to be made, the less reliable the end results. Investing in better data in this area should be a first priority for governments interested in criminal policy evaluation.     

The Perceived Seriousness of Crime in the Middle East

This paper builds on previous work in examining the seriousness of criminal acts. The research was conducted to determine the seriousness of several criminal acts in the Middle East with the goal to determine whether certain characteristics of the respondents would be associated with different perceptions as to the seriousness of different types of crimes. The findings of this study differ significantly from previous research in finding Moral Crimes to be perceived as extremely serious, in fact, about as serious as violent acts. However, the rank order of violent, property and white collar crimes, when the moral crimes are eliminated, are consistently with previous research. Similar to previous research, no difference was found in the overall ranking of crimes by any of the subgroups analyzed. It was found that religiosity (Islamic Fundamentalism) was the best predictor of a respondent's overall perception as to the seriousness of crime.     

Can Money Symbolize Acknowledgment? How Victims’ Relatives Perceive Monetary Awards for Their Emotional Harm

Legal systems differ markedly on how they treat the emotional harm suffered by close family members of crime or accident victims. This paper reports the results of two empirical studies examining how citizens whose child, partner, or parent was killed or seriously injured as a result of violent crime or tort (secondary victims) perceive a monetary award for their own non-economic harm relating to the death or injury of their loved one. The objective of our research was to test the Dutch legislator's assumption that a (modest) monetary award for secondary victims' emotional harm can have a meaningful symbolic value by providing recognition and satisfaction. Until then, no compensation was available for such harm under Dutch law. In addition, we examined whether victims' relatives preferred standardization or individuation in determining the amount of the award, how they evaluated the amount, and the manner in which such awards might be offered. In a first quantitative survey study conducted in the Netherlands, 726 secondary victims were asked for their evaluations of such awards for the emotional harm they suffered as a result of the death or injury of their family member. We also asked our representative sample about their actual experience of the legal process in order to put their evaluations of such awards into context. In a second qualitative study, conducted in Belgium, interviews were held with 14 secondary victims who had actually received an award for their own emotional harm under Belgian law (study 2). Results suggest that secondary victims regard an award for emotional harm as a positive gesture and may interpret it as helping to satisfy relatives' psychological concerns by seeing it, for example, as an acknowledgment of loss and responsibility. Overall findings suggest that victims' relatives may be seeking acknowledgement of their emotional losses and the norm violation.     

The impact of racial slurs and racism on the perceptions and punishment of violent crime

When a crime is committed by an individual of one race against an individual of another race, there is the possibility that the crime is a hate crime. Legislation often mandates harsher penalties for perpetrators convicted of crimes determined to be hate crimes, yet this determination is difficult to make. This study used vignettes of violent crimes to examine how the races of the perpetrators and victims, the severity of the assault, and the use of racial slurs by the perpetrators would affect perceptions of the crimes as "hate crimes," victim blaming, and sentencing recommendations. Results showed that each of these factors affected participants' perceptions and punishments of violent crime. Participants' levels of racism were an additional factor. These results contribute to the understanding of how crimes in which the perpetrator's and victim's races differ are perceived.     

What happens after the lone ranger rides away?

A community policing program consisting of citizen input and problem solving techniques often results in a decision to police places and translates into lower crime rates at the policed locations. Proponents of community policing programs believe that they build social capital, which invests neighborhood citizens in the crime reduction efforts and reduces the simultaneous occurrence of potential offenders and victims required for crimes to be committed.     

Estimates of Repeat Victimization Using the National Crime Victimization Survey

Many crime victims experience multiple victimizations over time. Estimating the rate of repeat victimization from a longitudinal survey, however, is difficult because individuals often have missing data for some of the interviews. We use data from the 1996–98 U.S. National Crime Victimization Survey to explore potential effects of missing data on estimated rates of repeat violent victimizations in individuals. We introduce two algorithms for estimating repeat victimization rates, using logistic models to impute values for individuals who have partial data. These models are applied to estimate rates of repeat victimization for all violent crimes, and separately for crimes of domestic violence. Estimates show substantial sensitivity to the form of the model used.     

Student perceptions of hate crimes

Estimates indicate hate crimes are a growing concern in the United States. This paper addresses how criminal justice students perceive victims of hate crimes. Survey findings show subjects are less likely to define certain groups of people as victims of hate crimes. Suggestions are made as to how criminal justice departments can heighten awareness of hate crime victims, multiculturalism, and gender diversity among criminal justice students.     

Perceived crime seriousness: Consensus and disparity

In this article, the statistical technique for setting up the consensus of perceived crime seriousness in previous studies is critically reviewed. The conventional method, when applied to a data set of crime seriousness, is found to have exaggerated the consensus because, by using a more appropriate model, which assumes perfect agreement in crime severity between subgroups, the consensus is reduced unanimously. By breaking down the population by gender, age, and educational level, sociodemographic differentials in crime seriousness are set up. The disparity is then further examined in details by paired comparisons between a target crime with fourteen other crimes. The three factors are all found to be important in affecting perceived crime seriousness. This conclusion is different from that of previous studies. The scaling method is found to be responsible for the difference. As the Thurstone method used in this study is more responsive and can produce more discriminating results, it is recommended for future research in crime severity. Finally, the implications of the findings on some important issues, like the appropriateness of legal penalty and the construction of a crime index, are discussed.