Contextual determinants of juveniles’ willingness to report crimes

Abstract

A growing body of literature on the willingness of victims to report crimes focuses on the context in which crimes occur. Recently, a socio-ecological model has been developed from which hypotheses on the effects of social context on reporting can be derived. This study tests these hypotheses using a vignette experiment, in which 499 juveniles read a description of a violent incident and answered questions on their willingness to report to the police or to an employee of the organization they belong to (here, their school). The effects of three factors were studied: the location of the crime, the extent to which victim and offender knew each other, and whether or not the offender was part of the same organization as the victim. Results show that the willingness to contact the police is lower when the incident takes place within the organization (cf. in the public domain) and when the offender is well known (cf. vaguely known), and that there is an additional negative effect when the incident takes place within the organization and the offender also belongs to the organization. The willingness to contact an employee is higher when the offender belongs to the organization and when the incident takes place within the organization. Implications of these findings and the advantages and limitations of the vignette approach are discussed.

On the Road to the Rule of Law: Crime, Crime Control, and Public Opinion in China

“…We take advantage of the technique of randomization to employ three different vignettes with a 2×2 factorial design resulting in four slightly different versions of each case in order to measure the elasticity of the respondents' penal preferences in reaction to varying degrees of offence severity and mitigating factors (for details of the vignettes, see Appendix). The randomized allocation of versions among respondents has the advantage that the resulting differences are solely attributable to the different cues given in the vignettes (Durham 1986;Goudriaan and Nieuwbeerta 2007).…”

When do people report crime to the police? Results from a factorial survey design in the Netherlands, 2010

“…Factorial survey designs have been used successfully in previous research in criminology in general (Ruiter and Tolsma 2010;Rossi et al 1985) and on reporting behavior more specifically (Aviram and Persinger 2010;Goudriaan and Nieuwbeerta 2007;Finkelhor and Wolak 2003). We constructed 220 different standardized fictive victimization scenarios (or 'vignettes'), which varied systematically in duration and flexibility, reporting method, anonymous reporting and encouragement by the police.…”

“…Previous studies used specific target groups such as adolescents (e.g., Goudriaan and Nieuwbeerta 2007;Finkelhor and Wolak 2003). The use of a representative sample allows for generalization of conclusions, but also enables us to test whether the factors of the reporting process that influence reporting decisions are conditional on individual characteristics.…”

The Impact of Prior Victimization and Socio-Economic Status on People’s Crime-Reporting Behavior

“…Somet imes, victims of crime are forced to put a stop to, for instance, repeat victimizations [43]. Th is means that, regardless of the negative effects of external factors (e.g., police behavior, fear of criminal retaliation, etc), the decision to report crimes to the police can be affected purely by the victim's perception of the event, which in most cases includes taking into account the seriousness of the victimization events, the type of victimizat ion events (i.e., being a vict im of p roperty crimes vs. being a v ictim of crimes against persons), and the relationship between the victim and the offender[see 5,11,22,34,45,53,[64][65][66], for reviews].…”