Crime Reporting Decisions and the Costs of Crime |
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Authors: | Roger Bowles Maria Garcia Reyes Nuno Garoupa |
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Institution: | (1) Centre for Criminal Justice Economics and Psychology, University of York, Heslington, York, YO10 4DD, UK;(2) University of Illinois College of Law, 504 E Pennsylvania Avenue, Champaign, IL 61820, USA |
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Abstract: | The paper develops a model of crime reporting based on an economic approach. It identifies the principal costs and benefits
of reporting from the victim’s perspective, taking account of insurance provision and the risk of intimidation by an offender.
It shows how a victim might use backward induction to infer a rational reporting strategy. The recording of crime by the police
is a process that relies on victim reports, and is thus influenced by the reporting decisions made by victims. The paper uses
empirical evidence from the British Crime Survey and from the International Crime Victims Survey to explore the hypotheses
generated by the model. It finds support for the suggestion that the propensity to report a crime increases with the size
of the loss entailed. The paper also explores the implications of the findings for the estimation of the costs of crime. Reporting
and intimidation costs are generally excluded from bottom-up estimates of costs, an omission that may be quite serious in
the context of offences such as domestic violence. |
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