“How Should the Police Let Victims Down?” The Impact of Reassurance Call-Backs by Local Police Officers to Victims of Vehicle and Cycle Crimes: A Block Randomized Controlled Trial

Clark, B. C.; Ariel, Barak; Harinam, Vincent

doi:10.1177/10986111221128751

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 58 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Police‐recorded data constitute the predominant method for analyzing crime, an approach limited by the willingness of members of the public to disclose their victimization (see Clark et al, 2022; McKee et al, 2022) or the wiliness of the police to focus more intently on victims (Lay et al, 2023). Consequently, supplementary or complementary datasets are necessary (see discussion in Ariel, 2023; and Loewenstein et al, 2023).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Overcoming unreported violence using place‐based ambulance data: The case for mapping hotspots based on health data for crime prevention initiatives

Simmonds,

Ariel,

Harinam

2023

Transactions in GIS

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

A key concern in crime analysis is the “hidden crime” problem. Crime events unaccounted for in police records limit the external validity of official statistics and, more importantly, hinder the ability of the police to manage crime and utilize their resources effectively. The problem is exacerbated in proactive initiatives aimed at curbing violence through hotspot policing, where inaccuracies and imprecision, or, worse, no data at all, diminish prevention efforts. Previous studies have sought to overcome the data problem by juxtaposing police records with ambulance data on assault callouts and have found profound disparities. Specifically, researchers matched “crime hotspots” with “ambulance hotspots” (rather than individual events) because patient confidentiality considerations have prevented health professionals from sharing subject‐level data with the police. However, health services can safely share spatial data on wider areas that do not disclose personal information. We build on this line of inquiry by analyzing data from the Thames Valley, United Kingdom, and observing spatial hotspots of different sizes. The results demonstrate that while the police and ambulance services attend to the same communities and similar types of facilities, the police are “blinded” to the location of nearly 8 out of 10 assaults. The incongruency is shown even with severe assaults, but to a lesser extent. We then simulate the reduction in injuries if the police had access to health data at different spatial levels and show that even under the most conservative set of assumptions, such an approach can prevent between 113 and 116 violent injuries each year that might otherwise require hospitalization.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Overcoming unreported violence using place‐based ambulance data: The case for mapping hotspots based on health data for crime prevention initiatives

Simmonds,

Ariel,

Harinam

2023

Transactions in GIS

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

‘Domestic abuse hot spots’: A longitudinal, place-based analysis of 13 years of initial reports to the police

Kumar,

Ariel,

Hodgkinson

et al. 2024

Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

A rich body of literature suggests that crime is concentrated in hotspots, some consistently ‘hot’ over long periods. However, whether there are spatial and temporal concentrations of domestic abuse (DA) is presently unknown. While it is plausible that DA data follow similar Pareto curves as general crime, it is equally reasonable to assume stochasticity, especially regarding year-to-year consistency. We conducted a retrospective longitudinal analysis of 1.7 million DA initial reports to the police (as opposed to ‘crime incidents’) over 13 years (2007–19) in London, UK. We also examine crime harm patterns, which provide a more nuanced risk estimate for victims based on a crime harm index. We utilize a combination of spatial statistics and trajectory modelling approaches. We find that a small percentage of addresses are responsible for an outsized proportion of DA counts but half the bandwidth for crime harm generated. Year-to-year repeat victimization at specific addresses is 69.9%, and the mean probability of receiving another DA report from the same address in the following month is 41%. For both crime count and harm models, locations with either low or high DA reportage remained as such throughout the study. Changes in less than 1% of locations will drive DA trends in London. We conclude that concentrating on place-based emergency-calls-for-service data rather than crime reports unmasks a substantially greater likelihood of repeat DA victimization than previously assumed. The discovery of a spatiotemporal DA hotspot allows law enforcement to ‘zero in’ prevention efforts on a small number of premises relative to the overall scale of the capital. Future DA research should place greater weight on micro-place factors associated with DA to calibrate prevention efforts’ accuracy and efficiency.

show abstract

Crime reporting and victim satisfaction with the police: a large-scale study among victims of crime in the Netherlands

Jansen,

Ruiter,

van Steden

2024

Crime Sci

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Objectives There is a rich body of research on how and why victims report crime to police, but little is known about the crime reporting process itself. This paper explores the relationship between victim satisfaction with the police after reporting crime and the various reporting channels victims used, as well as the subsequent police response. Methods We capitalize on a large-scale nationwide survey among victims in the Netherlands (N = 25,760). Using linear regression, we test how victim satisfaction with the police relates to the reporting channel used, follow-up contact by the police, and action taken by the police while controlling for type of crime, its impact on victims, their needs and their sociodemographic characteristics. Results The model explains 38% of the variance in victim satisfaction. The crime reporting channel and subsequent police response to crime reports show largest effects. When victims had in-person conversations with the police, the police reported back to them, and took further action, victims were most satisfied. Conclusions This study shows the importance of how police operate during and after victims report a crime for their satisfaction with police. The results suggest that police may be able to positively affect victim satisfaction by taking relatively simple measures. More research is needed to test this hypothesis using (quasi)experimental designs.

show abstract

“How Should the Police Let Victims Down?” The Impact of Reassurance Call-Backs by Local Police Officers to Victims of Vehicle and Cycle Crimes: A Block Randomized Controlled Trial

Cited by 3 publications

References 58 publications

Overcoming unreported violence using place‐based ambulance data: The case for mapping hotspots based on health data for crime prevention initiatives

Overcoming unreported violence using place‐based ambulance data: The case for mapping hotspots based on health data for crime prevention initiatives

‘Domestic abuse hot spots’: A longitudinal, place-based analysis of 13 years of initial reports to the police

Crime reporting and victim satisfaction with the police: a large-scale study among victims of crime in the Netherlands

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About