Crime-Reporting Practices Among Market Women in Oyo, Nigeria

Abstract

Crime surveys of businesses have revealed that while crimes in which men were victims tend to be reported, those in which women were victims are likely to go unreported to the police. Understanding the reasons behind male reporting and female non-reporting is useful not only for collection of crime statistics but also for improving crime control competences of law enforcement agencies. This article examines the impact of crime involving market women on their crime-reporting practices in Oyo town, Oyo State, Nigeria. The study adopted quantitative and qualitative approaches. Copies of a questionnaire were administered to collect quantitative data from randomly selected 210 market women at Akesan, Sabo, and Mosadoba markets in Oyo town. Five focus group discussions, in-depth and key informant interviews were conducted to complement quantitative data. Both data were analyzed. The study found that cultural considerations stand between crime events that hurt the economic interests of women and their readiness to report to the police. Due to the very low confidence that market women have in the ability and willingness of the police to apprehend criminals, they prefer to internalize their losses, take their cases to traditional rulers who use “oro cult” to protect them against criminals, or approach available faith-based options such as churches and mosques. The article concludes that women have economy-enriching roles to play in the context of sustainable security. It therefore suggests that the government should address public safety to enable market women make their modest contribution to Nigeria’s economic development.

Curtailing crime dynamics: A mathematical approach

“…However, what constitutes a crime is an illegal act or a perpetrator's deviant conduct, its effective punishment can be imposed by a criminal legislating institution [3,4], and the victims of these acts. Crime mainly rises from the combination of three factors: a driven offender, a suitable target, and the absence of an able guardian [5][6][7]. In view of this, all crimes require opportunity but not every opportunity is followed by crime.…”

Nonlinear Analysis of the Dynamics of Criminality and Victimisation: A Mathematical Model with Case Generation and Forwarding

“…e common denominator for what constitutes a 'crime' , however, consists of an unlawful act or the deviant behaviour of a perpetrator, its appropriate punishment, as prescribed by a criminal legislating institution [5,16] and the victim of such acts [1,16,17]. Criminality is basically in uenced by the convergence of three factors-a motivated o ender, a suitable target, and the absence of a capable guardian [14,[18][19][20]. e rise in global crime and criminality, together with the attendant e ect on victims is, in recent times, very worrisome [7,10,12,17,[21][22][23][24][25].…”

“…However, there is a wide gap between occurrences and their records [6,7] especially in developing countries. Victims are o en reluctant or unwilling to report their ordeals for factors deserving institutional attention [7,18,34]. e challenges militating against easy and willful ow of crime information, as at when due, have continued to create avoidable bottlenecks in the dispensation of criminal justice [6,7].…”

“…e social media has been explored in this regard in [35]. e short message service (SMS), like the Twitter-handle [35], has proven worthwhile in facilitating reportage [36,37] and guaranteeing secrecy and con dentiality [9,18,36,38]. A su cient volume of research has pro ered profound mathematical insight into the extent of and remedies to the menace of crime and criminality [2,9,13,15,27,34,39,[40][41][42][43][44].…”

Physical Security and Survival of <i>Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs)</i> in Southeast, Nigeria

“…In some countries (United States of America, Japan, Britain and Canada), definitions are given based on turnover; paid employees; type of industry and paid-up capital. However in Nigeria there are versions of definition of small scale business given by CBN; National Economic Reconstruction fund (NER FUND); Companies and Allied matters Decree (AMP, 1990) [8].…”