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Silence Speaks: The Relationship between Immigration and the Underreporting of Crime
Abstract
Scarce in criminological literature is an exploration of whether crime reporting varies geographically. Yet, there are substantive reasons to believe not only that the percentage of crimes reported to the police varies across jurisdictions but also that crime reporting can be explained by ecological characteristics. Drawing upon data from both the National Crime Victimization Survey and the U.S. census, this study examines the relationship between immigration and the likelihood that crimes are reported to the police. Results indicate that crime reporting is inversely related to increases in the relative size of both the noncitizen and foreign-born populations within a metropolitan area, and that the negative effect is greater for violence than for property crime. Implications for the underreporting of crime are discussed.
... Prior work has used surveys of attitudes to establish correlates between immigration enforcement and individual willingness to report crime (Becerra et al., 2017;Messing et al., 2015;Theodore et al., 2013;Vidales et al., 2009). Recent studies have also explored crime reporting patterns in areas with growing immigrant populations (Gutierrez & Kirk, 2017) and large shares of undocumented immigrants (Comino et al., 2016). These studies highlight how crime reporting and engagement with police is inhibited in areas with sizeable immigrant and undocumented populations, but do not consider immigration enforcement as an influencing factor. ...
... Finally, two studies have used the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) to examine crime reporting behavior among individuals living in metro areas with large immigrant populations (Comino et al., 2016;Gutierrez & Kirk, 2017). Gutierrez and Kirk (2017) examined whether individuals living in metro areas experiencing immigrant growth are less likely to report crime to the police. ...
... Finally, two studies have used the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) to examine crime reporting behavior among individuals living in metro areas with large immigrant populations (Comino et al., 2016;Gutierrez & Kirk, 2017). Gutierrez and Kirk (2017) examined whether individuals living in metro areas experiencing immigrant growth are less likely to report crime to the police. They found that crime reporting is less frequent in areas with growing immigrant populations. ...
... Numerous studies have identified older people to be more likely to report crime (Boateng, 2018;Baumer and Lauritsen, 2010;Goudriaan et al., 2006;Van Wyk and Mason, 2001). Females also appear more prone to informing the police of crime victimization (Baumer and Lauritsen, 2010;Goudriaan et al., 2006;Gutierrez and Kirk, 2017). The relationship between education level and crime reporting to the police remains unclear (Baumer and Lauritsen, 2010), though, regarding fraud in particular, higher education has been associated with greater reporting rates (Copes et al., 2001;Schoepfer and Piquero, 2009). ...
... The relationship between education level and crime reporting to the police remains unclear (Baumer and Lauritsen, 2010), though, regarding fraud in particular, higher education has been associated with greater reporting rates (Copes et al., 2001;Schoepfer and Piquero, 2009). And, although some studies have found native-born victims to report more (Goudriaan et al., 2006) or lower reporting in neighbourhoods with higher immigration (Gutierrez and Kirk, 2017), others have not found any clear conclusions regarding ethnicity (Baumer and Lauritsen, 2010) or have shown reporting to depend on the immigrant destination (Xie and Baumer, 2019). Employment status has also been associated with crime reporting in the sense that the unemployed (Boateng, 2018) or those who work fewer hours (Goudriaan et al., 2006) report more. ...
... The impact of victimization is relevant because a number of studies have shown that the financial or physical severity of the crime is positively related to reporting levels (Baumer, 2002;Baumer and Lauritsen, 2010;Bowles et al., 2009;Copes et al., 2001;Isenring et al., 2016;Tarling and Morris, 2010). In fact, some authors have found the severity of the crime to be the strongest predictor of whether or not a victim reports (Goudriaan et al., 2006;Gutierrez and Kirk, 2017;Robert et al., 2010). In the case of fraud, it should not be forgotten that the consequences for the victim are not only financial but also emotional, psychological or even physical (Button et al., 2014;Cross et al., 2016;Schoepfer and Piquero, 2009;Spalek, 1999), all of which may influence the reporting decision. ...
Fraud has been identified as one of the most prevalent property crimes in the Internet era and underreporting represents one of the most pressing challenges to prevention and policing. Like fraud itself, the issue is not new and therefore traditional findings and approaches designed to foster reporting may also be applicable to online fraud. This study performs a series of regression models to analyse data on fraud victims from two editions of the representative Catalan Public Security Survey. The aim is to identify and compare socio-demographic, context and crime event determinants of online and offline fraud reporting, as well as the reasons for not reporting. Thus, the article contributes to the literature regarding cybercrime and traditional crime a/symmetries. The findings show that, surprisingly, online fraud is reported at a higher rate than offline fraud, mainly owing to the greater odds of being considered a crime by the victim. In general, fraud reporting appears to involve a rational component because financial and non-financial harms and the expected utility of reporting are more relevant to the decision than socio-demographic factors. In addition, the most common reasons for not reporting refer to the opportunity costs of doing so. The demographic predictors of online reporters show only slight differences from their offline counterparts, but more associations are found regarding the reasons for not reporting. Finally, the implications for policy are discussed.
... First, it can be expected that, other things being equal, more serious offenses are reported more often because this could increase the expected compensation but not the costs of reporting. In line with this, previous research has shown that the degree of both financial damage (for example, Baumer and Lauritsen, 2010;Bowles et al., 2009;Gutierrez and Kirk, 2017) and physical harm (for example, Baumer and Lauritsen, 2010;Schnebly, 2008;Tarling and Morris, 2010) are positively related to the reporting of victimization of property and violent crime, respectively. Second, it can be expected that victims are more likely to report property crimes when they are insured for the damage. ...
... From a sociological perspective it can be argued that the social environment, in terms of more structural neighborhood characteristics, also influences variation in crime reporting behavior (Goudriaan, 2006). Previous studies have investigated the influences of victims' neighborhood characteristics such as the social-economic circumstances (for example, Gutierrez and Kirk, 2017;Schnebly, 2008), the degree of urbanization (for example, Goudriaan et al., 2004;Schnebly, 2008;Torrente et al., 2017), the degree of social cohesion (for example, Goudriaan et al., 2006;Hart and Colavito, 2011), the ethnic composition (for example, Schnebly, 2008;Gutierrez and Kirk, 2017), and the degree of residential mobility (for example, Goudriaan et al., 2006;Schnebly, 2008) on victims' crime reporting behavior. The results from these studies were, however, ambiguous and often insignificant. ...
... From a sociological perspective it can be argued that the social environment, in terms of more structural neighborhood characteristics, also influences variation in crime reporting behavior (Goudriaan, 2006). Previous studies have investigated the influences of victims' neighborhood characteristics such as the social-economic circumstances (for example, Gutierrez and Kirk, 2017;Schnebly, 2008), the degree of urbanization (for example, Goudriaan et al., 2004;Schnebly, 2008;Torrente et al., 2017), the degree of social cohesion (for example, Goudriaan et al., 2006;Hart and Colavito, 2011), the ethnic composition (for example, Schnebly, 2008;Gutierrez and Kirk, 2017), and the degree of residential mobility (for example, Goudriaan et al., 2006;Schnebly, 2008) on victims' crime reporting behavior. The results from these studies were, however, ambiguous and often insignificant. ...
Although the prevalence of cybercrime has increased rapidly, most victims do not report these offenses to the police. This is the first study that compares associations between victim characteristics and crime reporting behavior for traditional crimes versus cybercrimes. Data from four waves of a Dutch cross-sectional population survey are used (N = 97,186 victims). Results show that cybercrimes are among the least reported types of crime. Moreover, the determinants of crime reporting differ between traditional crimes and cybercrimes, between different types of cybercrime (that is, identity theft, consumer fraud, hacking), and between reporting cybercrimes to the police and to other organizations. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.
... A large body of evidence demonstrates that incident-and individual-level characteristics consistently shape decisions to report crime victimization to the police (Baumer and Lauritsen 2010;Felson et al. 2002;Gottfredson and Hindelang 1979;Skogan 1984;Xie and Baumer 2019a). Fewer studies directly assess how socio-environmental conditions structure crime-reporting behavior (but see Baumer 2002;Desmond et al. 2016;Gutierrez and Kirk 2017;Xie and Baumer 2019a), which has led to calls for greater attention to the macro-level contexts within which victimization occurs (Goudriaan and Nieuwbeerta 2007;Xie and Baumer 2019b). We contribute to this line of investigation by demonstrating how social policy contexts can interact with victims' personal characteristics to structure help-seeking behavior. ...
... Finally, external environments refer to the characteristics of the broader social contexts within which victimization occurs, including victims' social networks, local community/ neighborhood of residence, or larger macrolevel units such as cities, counties, MSAs, or states. Notwithstanding a few notable studies (Baumer 2002;Desmond et al. 2016;Gutierrez and Kirk 2017;Xie and Baumer 2019b), the external environmental correlates of police notification remain understudied (Xie and Baumer 2019a). ...
... First, as thoroughly discussed by Xie and Baumer (2019a), the multilevel, contextualized help-seeking framework emphasizes that victims' decisions to call the police can be directly shaped by the characteristics of the external environment within which victimization occurs. As evidence, Gutierrez and Kirk (2017) find that crime reporting is inversely related to the relative size of the immigrant population across MSAs, with the negative effect being stronger for violent crime than for property crime. The authors acknowledge that their study cannot identify the underlying mechanisms suppressing crime reporting, but Gutierrez and Kirk's (2017) findings (see also Xie and Baumer 2019b) are consistent with a number of theoretical expectations derived from micro-level perspectives (Skogan 1984), Black's (1976) theory of law, and the broader multilevel, contextualized help-seeking framework (Xie and Baumer 2019a). ...
Sanctuary jurisdictions have existed in the United States since the 1980s. They have recently reentered U.S. politics and engendered contentious debates regarding their legality and influence on public safety. Critics argue that sanctuary jurisdictions create conditions that threaten local communities by impeding federal immigration enforcement efforts. Proponents maintain that the policies improve public safety by fostering institutional trust among immigrant communities and by increasing the willingness of immigrant community members to notify the police after they are victimized. In this study, we situate expectations from the immigrant sanctuary literature within a multilevel,
contextualized help-seeking framework to assess how crime-reporting behavior varies across immigrant sanctuary contexts. We find that Latinos are more likely to report violent crime victimization to law enforcement after sanctuary policies have been adopted within their metropolitan areas of residence. We argue that social policy contexts can shift the nature of help-seeking experiences and eliminate barriers that undermine crime victims’ willingness to mobilize the law. Overall, this study highlights the unique role social policy contexts can serve in structuring victims’ help-seeking decisions.
... For example, there has been much speculation in the contemporary era that the rates of cooperation with and reporting to the police may be significantly lower in immigrant neighborhoods, but this possibility has only recently been explored by researchers. Thus far, the empirical evidence has been mixed (Gutierrez & Kirk 2017, Kirk et al. 2012, Schnebly 2008. Xie & Baumer's (2017) analysis of NCVS data suggests that the inconsistencies are lessened after the victims' residential county's history of immigrant incorporation is considered. ...
... Echoing this perspective, the 12-city survey administered in 1998 by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) and the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) (Smith et al. 1999) showed differences in the rate of violent and property crimes being reported to the police across the cities, but the comparison was with tabular values of reporting rates not in the context of multivariate analyses that held constant characteristics of crimes and victims. In 2007, the BJS released a special subset of the NCVS data for 40 metropolitan areas, and the data have been used by a few scholars to model variation across metropolitan areas in victim reporting rates (e.g., Gutierrez & Kirk 2017, Miller & Segal 2014, Xie 2014, Xie & Lauritsen 2012. These studies included a rich set of metro-level covariates to identify the sources of variation in victim reporting, including the gender composition of the local police force (Miller & Segal 2014), the demographic and socioeconomic attributes of local residents (Gutierrez & Kirk 2017), and the degree of stratification across residential, economic, racial/ethnic, and political sectors (Xie & Lauritsen 2012). ...
... In 2007, the BJS released a special subset of the NCVS data for 40 metropolitan areas, and the data have been used by a few scholars to model variation across metropolitan areas in victim reporting rates (e.g., Gutierrez & Kirk 2017, Miller & Segal 2014, Xie 2014, Xie & Lauritsen 2012. These studies included a rich set of metro-level covariates to identify the sources of variation in victim reporting, including the gender composition of the local police force (Miller & Segal 2014), the demographic and socioeconomic attributes of local residents (Gutierrez & Kirk 2017), and the degree of stratification across residential, economic, racial/ethnic, and political sectors (Xie & Lauritsen 2012). However, as the number of sample cities or metro areas in this literature has remained relatively small compared to the whole nation, systematic efforts need to be focused on developing more comprehensive data that extends the geographic coverage of the comparisons, which is a central component of the most current NCVS redesign, as noted above in the section titled Victimization Surveys (Langton et al. 2017). ...
Over the past 50 years, researchers in the United States and abroad have
debated the inherent inequities within justice systems that contribute to
the underreporting of crime to the police. Our review summarizes existing
knowledge about victim reporting and outlines new directions in theory
and empirical research that situate this work within a broader perspective
on victim help-seeking. We begin with a short review of the historical development
of research on victim reporting and its implications for research
and social policy. We then review and critique major explanations of victims’
reporting behavior and outline a new integrated multilevel framework.
This model draws on the broader help-seeking literature to study police
notification and other forms of victim help-seeking as interrelated systems
that respond to social-contextual factors and feedback effects. We conclude
by outlining the core empirical implications of this multilevel theoretical
framework and illuminating the most significant data and research needs.
http://www.annualreviews.org/eprint/zNqPbeeK8gPB2Jai4ctz/full/10.1146/annurev-criminol-011518-024748
... However, scant empirical support of this theory exists. Some studies do not find a significant effect of social disadvantage when examining specific types of crime (Gutierrez and Kirk, 2017;Zhang et al., 2007) while others have found that neighborhood disadvantage has a non-linear effect on crime reporting in the United States and the Netherlands (Baumer, 2002;Goudriaan et al., 2006), and on burglary reporting in China (Zhang et al., 2007). Theoretically, a non-linear relationship between these variables can be understood as a much lower likelihood of reporting among individuals who live in concentrated areas of social disadvantage, which levels off as neighborhood disadvantage decreases. ...
... Though this technique is the standard procedure for analyzing nested data (Raudenbush and Bryk, 2002), only four prior studies of crime reporting have used it (Berg et al., 2013;Goudriaan et al., 2006;Gutierrez and Kirk, 2017;Zhang et al., 2007), the rest having used logistic regression models. Multilevel modeling reduces the possibility of Type I errors, avoids understating variances (Williams, 2000), and produces efficient and unbiased estimators (Goldstein, 2010). ...
Most empirical studies that examine why individuals report property crimes to the police have focused on Global North countries where crime rates are low. This study is situated in the most violent area of the world, Latin America, and examines Peru, which has the highest robbery victimization rate in the Americas. This article examines the applicability of theories of crime reporting in this Global South context using a large sample and multilevel modeling. We find that trust in the police has no impact on the reporting of the robbery of one’s cellphone, purse or wallet. The theories of rational choice and Black’s stratification of law provide strong explanations for the reporting of robbery of these personal items. Individuals of higher social status and those who reside in districts with low levels of social disadvantage are more likely to report, as well as those who have experienced violent victimization.
... Respecto del sexo de la víctima, en algunos estudios las mujeres tienen menor probabilidad de denunciar delitos patrimoniales frente a los hombres (Benavente y Cortés, 2006). Otros trabajos han hallado el efecto opuesto (Baumer, 2002;Greenberg y Beach, 2004;Gutiérrez y Kirk, 2017). La educación como factor explicativo de las denuncias también carece de robustez. ...
... La educación como factor explicativo de las denuncias también carece de robustez. Algunos han identificado que sí tiene un efecto positivo sobre la decisión de denunciar (Benavente y Cortés, 2006;Gutiérrez y Kirk, 2017), pero otros no (Baumer, 2002). Los trabajos que señalan que los individuos de "mayor estatus social" tienen una mayor probabilidad de denunciar (Finkelhor y Ormrod, 1999;Warner, 1992) sostienen la noción de estratificación de la ley (Black, 1973), en la cual la movilización legal está vinculada con el estatus social (Baumer, 2002;Kuo et al., 2012;Posick, 2014). ...
Perú no solo tiene una de las mayores tasas de victimización en Latinoamérica (24%), sino también la menor en delitos denunciados (15%) (Latinobarómetro, 2016). En este trabajo, el objetivo fue identificar las características del crimen y las características individuales que predicen la decisión de denunciar cuatro delitos patrimoniales distintos (robo de hogares, de auto, de autopartes y de moto). Para ello, se emplearon siete años de una encuesta de hogares a nivel nacional en Perú (2010-2016). Las estimaciones se realizaron mediante regresión logística multinivel de efectos mixtos a fin de controlar las características del ambiente que también influyen en la decisión de denuncia. El uso de arma de parte del delincuente es el factor que eleva en mayor proporción la probabilidad de denunciar cualquiera de los cuatro delitos evaluados. La victimización reiterada es también un predictor importante, aunque para menos delitos. La confianza en la
policía no está asociada a la decisión de denunciar. Este estudio es el primero que analiza cuantitativamente los factores que afectan la decisión de denunciar en el Perú. Sus resultados son útiles para un mejor entendimiento de la baja tasa de denuncias
en el país.
... Of these explanations, crime severity and individual differences are the focus of most empirical research. Less often considered-although it is a frequent topic of conversation among researchers and policy makersis how community conditions, including the concentration of immigrants, influence the likelihood of crime reporting (Baumer, 2002;Gutierrez & Kirk, 2017). This lack of research is, at least in part, because data for community identifiers are usually not available in publicly accessible data sets on crime reporting levels (see discussion by Baumer, 2002). ...
... In a handful of studies that have been aimed at doing so, researchers have relied on data from a narrow range of cities (such as New York City and Chicago) using observations from a small sample of neighborhoods (e.g., Davis & Henderson, 2003). Alternatively, a few efforts have been designed to compare levels of victim reporting across major cities or metropolitan areas, where the scope of investigation was limited to city-wide (or metropolitan-wide) measures of immigrant concentration that do not reflect neighborhood variation (Gutierrez & Kirk, 2017;Schnebly, 2008). Although valuable, these earlier efforts represent a narrow assessment of neighborhood effects that should be expanded to encompass a wider theoretical scope, as we elaborate in this article. ...
The content sharing link for this article is https://rdcu.be/bo7VI
---------Using data from the Area-Identified National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), we provide a national assessment of the impact of neighborhood immigrant concentration on whether violence is reported to the police. By drawing on multiple theoretical perspectives, we outline how the level of violence reporting could be higher or lower in immigrant neighborhoods, as well as how this may depend on individual race/ethnicity and the history of immigration in the county in which immigrant neighborhoods are located. Controlling for both individual and neighborhood-level conditions, our findings indicate that within traditional immigrant counties, rates of violence reporting in immigrant neighborhoods are similar to those observed elsewhere. In contrast, within newer immigrant destinations, we observe much lower rates of violence reporting in neighborhoods with a large concentration of immigrants. Our study findings reveal comparable patterns for Whites, Blacks, and Latinos. The results have important implications for theory, policy, and future research.
... That fear of deportation may induce underreporting amongst Latino immigrants has also been mentioned in a study about immigrants in Phoenix, Arizona (Menjivar & Bejarano, 2004), and in one about immigrants in Reno, Nevada (Correia, 2010). 4 The only study that also uses a large and representative sample (the NCVS), finds that crime reporting rates are negatively correlated with the relative size of noncitizen and foreign-born individuals living in a metropolitan area (Gutierrez & Kirk, 2015), but does not exploit any exogenous variation in legal status. ...
Do undocumented migrants underreport crimes to the police in order to avoid being deported? And do criminals exploit such vulnerability? We address these questions using victimization surveys and administrative data around the 1986 U.S. immigration amnesty. The amnesty allows us to solve two major identification issues that have plagued this literature: migrants’ legal status is endogenous and unobserved.
The results show that the reporting rate of undocumented immigrants is 17 percent, which limits the immigrants’ ability to protect some of their fundamental human rights. However, right after the 1986 amnesty, which disproportionately legalized individuals of Hispanic origin, crime victims of Hispanic origin show enormous improvements in reporting behavior. The implied increase in the reporting rate by amnesty applicants is close to 20 percentage points.
... Some evidence indicates that simple assaults that involve little or no physical contact are either under-reported or not reported at all [6,43]. Further, communities of color tend to be distrustful of police and may underreport certain crimes in their community [44,45]. To address this limitation, studies elsewhere have utilized data of victims of violent crime appearing in hospitals [46], which in tandem with police-incidence reports may begin to provide a more holistic understanding of violent crime in a target community. ...
Alcohol outlet density (AOD) and abandoned or vacant properties in under-served urban communities has received increased attention and has been linked to community violence. While previous research has examined the AOD and violent crime association, less research has investigated the relationship between abandoned properties and violent crime. Those studies that are present examining the AOD-abandoned properties-violent crime link have been plagued by flaws that include statistical weaknesses and aggregated datasets that investigated larger units such as states or countries. The present study, using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) mapping, spatial analysis techniques, and a regression-based approach examines the association between AOD and abandoned properties on violent crime, controlling for demographic characteristics, in Paterson, New Jersey. Results provide some evidence on the association between AOD and abandoned properties on violent crime, drawing conclusions for policy and practice.
... Although the reasons behind this finding were unclear, Rennison (2007) speculated that less education may coincide with language barriers. In addition to limited English proficiency, scholars have presented other possibilities including concerns about immigration status (undocumented and legal) and cultural beliefs that the police (as an outsider) should not be involved with personal matters or challenge the head of the household as possible reasons for nonreporting (Carter 1983;Gutierrez and Kirk 2017;Herbst and Walker 2001;Rennison 2007;Weitzer 2014). However, if these reasons were the case, they still would not explain the divergence between Hispanic males with Hispanic females (see Messing et al. 2015 for accounts of Latinas' reasons for not reporting). ...
This study uses an intersectional approach to examine the “paradox” that disadvantaged victims often mobilize the police, despite their distrust and lack of confidence in the law. Data from the National Crime Victimization Survey (1994–2016) were analyzed using logistic regression to model the predicted probabilities of police notification by victims of crime. Economic disadvantage, as measured by family poverty and lack of a high school education, increased the probability that females reported their victimization to the police, but decreased the likelihood that males did so. Economically disadvantaged black females had the highest probability of reporting, while economically disadvantaged black and Hispanic males had the lowest. Examining the intersectional differences across social groups shows that reporting behavior is not just a function of one attribute but rather is a function of multiple identities and structural inequalities.
... One study found that when a city faces rapid growth in the foreign-born population, the probability of reporting a violent crime decreases by about 15 percent. 40 Studies on Latina victims of domestic violence in the US found that the victims tended not to seek help from or report the crime to the police. Besides cultural barriers, shame, and fear of the police and the criminal justice system, having an irregular migration status played a central role in discouraging reports to the police, including because the victims were intimidated by the abuser with the threat of deportation. ...
This report describes measures allowing safe reporting of crime by irregular migrants in the United States. It covers measures adopted by US federal authorities, as well by local governments, focusing in particular on initiatives adopted in the cities of New York and San Francisco. It describes the functioning of safe reporting practices, as well as the legal and political conditions that make safe reporting practices possible in the United States, both at national and local levels. It thus aims to spell out the elements required for a broad assessment of the replicability in other national contexts of certain practices adopted in the USA.
This study was conducted in the framework of a project by the University of Oxford’s Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS) exploring law, policy and practice surrounding ‘safe reporting’ of crime for victims and witnesses with irregular status in the United States and Europe (hereafter “the ‘safe reporting’ project”). In parallel to this report, studies on safe reporting of crime for irregular migrants have been conducted in four European countries (Belgium, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands).The project ultimately aims to: provide authoritative evidence on and analysis of policies and best-practices enabling and encouraging ‘safe reporting’ in Europe and the USA; assess the legal and political replicability of practices and policies across different countries; and facilitate knowledge-exchange between European and US policymakers regarding the opportunities for replicating best practices across different national and local settings.
... Moreover, victims with a (marital) partner are more likely to report their victimization to the police than those without a partner (e.g., Baumer & Lauritsen, 2010;Goudriaan et al., 2004;Schnelby, 2008). Finally, mixed results have been found in previous studies with respect to the associations of educational level and income with crime reporting behavior (e.g., Goudriaan et al., 2006;Gutierrez & Kirk, 2017;Guzy & Hirtenlehner, 2015;Schnelby, 2008). ...
Purpose
Cybercrime rates have increased rapidly during the last couple of decades, resulting in cybercrimes becoming common crimes. However, most victims do not report cybercrimes to the police. Therefore, this study examines reporting cybercrime victimization and provides insights into the role of the police in this process.
Design/methodology/approach
A sample of 595 individuals was used. All respondents were shown three vignettes about hypothetical cybercrime victimization and were asked to imagine that this situation happened to them. Four crime and reporting characteristics were manipulated across vignettes. Respondents' intentions to report to the police and to other organizations were used as the dependent variables in regression analyses. Four random factors in the vignettes (i.e. type of crime, seriousness of crime, victim–perpetrator relationship, and reporting modality), as well as several characteristics of the respondents were included in the regression models as independent variables.
Findings
The type of cybercrime is the most important predictor for reporting behaviors. Other determinants are: more serious offenses were more often reported and offenses are less often reported in situations where the victim personally knows the perpetrator. Furthermore, there is large discrepancy between intended and actual cybercrime reporting. These findings provide valuable insights into the factors that influence reporting behavior in the real world. Only a fifth of respondents indicated that they would not report cybercrime victimization to the police. This implies that attempts at improving reporting rates should not solely be focused on improving people's attitudes, but also on removing obstacles to turn these attitudes into actions.
Originality/value
In the current study, the authors contribute to the existing literature by asking a large sample from the general population in the Netherlands about both their intended reporting behavior (i.e. a vignette study) and their actual reporting behavior (i.e. self-reports) of victimization of a wide variety of different types of cybercrime. Determinants of both reporting to the police as well as to other organizations are examined. Moreover, respondents are asked about motivations behind their decision to (not) report a cybercrime to the police. Last, people were asked about their past experiences with reporting cybercrime victimization to the police.
... Therefore, existing studies rely on geographic characteristics to explore these questions. Gutierrez and Kirk (2017) examined individual crime reporting behavior in large metropolitan areas between 2002 and 2004. They found that individuals living in metro areas experiencing rapid immigrant growth in the 1990s were more likely to underreport violent crime relative to metro areas that did not experience such growth. ...
The unwillingness of Latino and immigrant communities to interact with the police or report crime is a recognized concern of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). Using data on calls for service dispatched to LAPD patrols from 2014 through 2017, we assess if heightened awareness of immigration enforcement, as captured by a novel Google Trends index on related searches, is associated with reduced calls to report domestic violence in predominately Latino noncitizen neighborhoods. We find that domestic violence calls per capita dropped in LAPD reporting districts with a higher concentration of Latino noncitizens as awareness about immigration enforcement increased. The decline provides empirical evidence of the “chilling effect” of immigration enforcement on Latino immigrant engagement with the police, underscoring the need to engage communities increasingly alienated by federal immigration policy.
... In addition, future research should use more precise assessments of crime and violence; this study was limited to the questions asked in the NESARC-III survey and crime outcomes did not refer to specific time frames. It is important to note that research does suggest immigrants are less likely to report crimes to police (Gutierrez and Kirk 2017), and thus this may have occurred in the context of the NESARC-III survey. ...
Topics of immigration and crime often receive national attention, despite evidence of the “immigrant paradox,” in which immigrants have lower than expected crime and violence given their extreme social disadvantage. Research examining the immigrant paradox using an expanded set of crime outcomes and the latest available population data is needed. Using the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions Wave III data (2012-2013; n = 36,309), we analyzed the association between first-generation immigrant status alongside violence (i.e., other-directed, self-directed, victimization) and criminal involvement (i.e., crime, legal problems, incarceration) outcomes. Immigrants self-reported lower rates of all outcomes compared to U.S.-born adults, providing continued support for the immigrant paradox. Future research considering later generations of immigrants, as well as differential mechanisms through which immigrants and U.S.-born adults engage in violence and crime, is needed.
... Specifically, we examine how policy-driven national variation in immigration enforcement affects individuals' propensity to utilize the criminal justice system. Our work builds on insights from research showing how certain characteristics of groups and individuals influence the rate of utilization of state services (Currie 2006;Aizer 2007;Bertrand et al. 2006;Besley and Coate 1992;Bhargava and Manoli 2015;Chetty et al. 2013) and that areal crime underreporting is positively associated with immigrant population share (Gutierrez and Kirk 2017;Davis and Erez 1998). ...
Does intensifying immigrationenforcement lead to under-reporting of crime among undocumented immigrants and their communities? We empirically test the claims of activists and legal advocates that the escalation of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activities in 2017 negatively impacted the willingness of undocumented immigrants and Hispanic communities to report crime. We hypothesize that ICE cooperation with local law enforcement, in particular, discourages undocumented immigrants and their Hispanic community members from reporting crime. Using a difference-in-difference approach and FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) data at the county level, we find that total reported crime fell from 2016 to 2017 in counties with higher shares of Hispanic individuals and in counties where local law enforcement had more cooperation with ICE. Using the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), we show that these declines in the measured crime rate are driven by decreased crime reporting by Hispanic communities rather than by decreased crime commission or victimization. Finally, we replicate these results in a second case study by leveraging the staggered roll-out of the 2008–2014 Secure Communities program across US counties. Taken together, our findings add to a growing body of literature demonstrating how immigration enforcement reduces vulnerable populations’ access to state services, including the criminal justice system.
... Moreover, income and crime-reporting seem to be positively related (Robert et al., 2010;Torrente et al., 2017;. Also one's level of education appears to be of importance, but results are inconclusive about the exact relationship, as sometimes a negative association (e.g., , and sometimes a positive association is found between educational attainment and reporting (e.g., Gutierrez & Kirk, 2017). The role nationality plays in reporting behavior depends on several factors. ...
... Second, the study data rely solely on police reports with limitations that have been long recognized ( Sherman, Gartinand, and Buerger 1989 ). Moreover, recent research has found that areas with greater levels of immigration report fewer criminal events to the police ( Gutierrez and Kirk 2017 ), potentially having an impact on our results, however this eff ect is lesser for property crime types. Th ird, while the current study is informative with regard to understanding spatial trends of immigration and property crime patterns across Vancouver CTs, fi ndings do not provide in-depth answers regarding why immigration and crime patterns are occurring in these places and why spatial property crime patterns have shift ed from 2003 to 2016. ...
We empirically evaluate the distribution of spatial patterns at the census tract (CT) level for various immigration and property crime measures in Vancouver, British Columbia, 2003 and 2016, using a spatial point pattern test that identifies significant similarities, or otherwise, in the spatial patterns of (a) multiple measures of immigration, (b) various property crime classifications, and (c) immigration and crime patterns together. Results show local-level variations in the spatial concentration of immigration in Vancouver CTs. The use of multiple measures of immigration showed substantive variations of immigrant settlement at the local level. Moreover, results reveal that while immigrant concentration patterns are stable over time and, thus, demonstrate ecological stability, property crime patterns shift from year to year. The spatial analytic approach utilized in this study provides support for the use of local-level spatial models and the multidimensional operationalization of the immigration variable even when their correlations are high. There is heterogeneity among immigrant groups, an important yet often overlooked aspect in assessments of immigration effects on crime.
... On gender and crime reporting, see Tarling and Morris (2010) and Malone (2012). On age, migratory status and crime reporting, see Malone (2012), and Gutiérrez and Kirk (2017). Finally, on the relation between crime severity and crime reporting, see Tarling and Morris (2010). ...
In recent years, citizen-run anti-crime organizations have brought important challenges to Mexico and other Latin American countries. Under what circumstances are citizens more likely to seek out their neighbors to confront crime directly? I argue that when citizens do not trust state authorities, their perception of the trustworthiness of their community can increase their likelihood of engaging in anti-crime organization attempts. I analyze data from Mexico and find that an average citizen’s perception of the trustworthiness of his/her neighbors correlates with his/her likelihood of engaging in an anti-crime organization attempt. Further, consistent with the main argument of this paper, I find this link to be stronger among those who distrust the police. These findings contribute by bringing back citizens’ relation to the state as an important moderating force in society, and helping us understand when social trust can translate into controversial forms of state substitution. Resumen En los últimos años organizaciones anti-criminales han generado importantes desafíos para México y otros países latinoamericanos. ¿Bajo qué circunstancias buscan los ciudadanos unirse a su comunidad para enfrentar al crimen directamente? En este artículo propongo que, en contextos en los que los ciudadanos desconfían de sus autoridades de procuración de justicia, su confianza interpersonal se traduce en una mayor disposición a buscar defenderse directamente del crimen de forma colectiva. Para poner esta idea a prueba analizo datos de México. Encuentro que, en efecto, la confianza interpersonal se correlaciona positivamente con la probabilidad de un ciudadano promedio busque asociarse con sus vecinos para defenderse del crimen. Más aún, en línea con el argumento principal de este texto, encuentro que el vínculo entre estas dos variables es más fuerte entre quienes desconfían de la policía. Estos hallazgos contribuyen trayendo de vuelta al estado como una fuerza moderadora en la sociedad. En efecto, una fuerza que determina cuando la confianza social puede traducirse en formas controversiales de sustitución estatal.
... Crime reporting decisions also operate in a macrolevel context encompassing specific cities, local governments or whole nations [52]. Gutierrez and Kirk [25] find that, within the US, metropolitan areas with greater proportions of foreign-born or non-US citizens have decreased crime reporting rates, and the results of [33] suggest that cities with more female police officers have higher rates of victim crime reporting for violent crimes against women. Goudriaan et al. [22] analyze data from 16 Western industrialized countries and find that differences in crime reporting rates are not entirely explained by crime types, individual and local contexts, but vary with nation-level factors such as the perceived competence of the police at large. ...
Police departments around the world have been experimenting with forms of place-based data-driven proactive policing for over two decades. Modern incarnations of such systems are commonly known as hot spot predictive policing. These systems predict where future crime is likely to concentrate such that police can allocate patrols to these areas and deter crime before it occurs. Previous research on fairness in predictive policing has concentrated on the feedback loops which occur when models are trained on discovered crime data, but has limited implications for models trained on victim crime reporting data. We demonstrate how differential victim crime reporting rates across geographical areas can lead to outcome disparities in common crime hot spot prediction models. Our analysis is based on a simulation patterned after district-level victimization and crime reporting survey data for Bogot\'a, Colombia. Our results suggest that differential crime reporting rates can lead to a displacement of predicted hotspots from high crime but low reporting areas to high or medium crime and high reporting areas. This may lead to misallocations both in the form of over-policing and under-policing.
... The same study found that the relationship between deportation fear and willingness to report crime no longer existed when Latinas trusted the police would not use excessive force, a finding pointing at the relevance of safe interactions with the police (Messing et al., 2015). This confluence of factors results in a systematic underreporting of crime from victims with irregular migration status, with important consequences not only for victims' protection but also for public safety and the efficiency of law enforcement, as perpetrators go undetected and free to repeat crime (Gutierrez & Kirk, 2015). With particular attention to "Hispanic" irregular migrants in the United States, Comino et al. (2016) estimated that these irregular migrants are four times less likely to report a crime than "legalized migrants" (11.2% vs. 38.7%) ...
In both the United States and Spain, Latino migrants are disproportionately exposed to crime victimization. Among them, those with irregular status are scared to report crime to the police out of the fear of deportation. This article explores how national legislation and local policies in the United States and Spain regulate the possibility of irregular migrants who are victims of crime to interact with the police. We analyze the interplay between immigration and criminal legislation and enforcement structures in the United States and Spain to define whether deportation is a real or perceived risk for victims reporting crime. We identify opportunities for “safe reporting of crime,” and we look at how policy responses in the two countries compare. We find that national legislation in both countries introduced measures aimed at allowing safe interactions between migrant victims and the police. Additionally, in the United States, cities also adopted local “safe reporting” policies. However, despite these existing measures, opportunities for safe reporting remain limited in both countries. We conclude with a discussion on lessons that legislators in the United States and Spain could learn from each other to improve the reporting of crime from victims with irregular status.
... Nevertheless, owing to its ability to address hard-to-measure outcomes, survey data continues to be a ubiquitous and possibly even the dominant source of evidence in criminological research (Kleck et al. 2006). Indeed, survey research remains a critical and sometimes the primary source of what we know about the prevalence of crime (Baumer and Lauritsen 2010;Gutierrez and Kirk 2017), the deterrence value of sanctions (Pogarsky et al. 2005;Apel et al. 2009;Nagin et al. 2013) and life course criminology (Farrington 2003;Apel et al. 2009) among many other core literatures. ...
Observational evidence suggests that better ambient lighting leads people to feel safer when spending time outdoors in their community. We subject this finding to greater scrutiny and elaborate on the extent to which improvements in street lighting affect routine activities during nighttime hours. We report evidence from a survey experiment that examines individuals’ perceptions of safety under two different intensities of nighttime ambient lighting. Brighter street lighting leads individuals to feel safer and over half of survey respondents are willing to pay an additional $400 per year in taxes in order to finance a hypothetical program which would replace dim yellow street lights with brighter LED lights. However, poor lighting does not change people’s willingness to spend time outdoors or to engage in behaviors which mitigate risk. Results suggest that street lighting is a means through which policymakers can both control crime and improve community well-being.
... Nevertheless, because we are using official crime statistics, there is a plausible alternative interpretation: Increased unauthorized immigration results in fewer crimes reported to the police. In other words, those who lack legal status, and potentially their lawful friends and family members as well, may be hesitant to report violent victimizations to avoid detection from legal officials (Gutierrez and Kirk, 2017). If this is the case, our results may reflect less reporting rather than less crime. ...
Despite substantial public, political, and scholarly attention to the issue of immigration and crime, we know little about the criminological consequences of undocumented immigration. As a result, fundamental questions about whether undocumented immigration increases violent crime remain unanswered. In an attempt to address this gap, we combine newly developed estimates of the unauthorized population with multiple data sources to capture the criminal, socioeconomic, and demographic context of all 50 states and Washington, DC, from 1990 to 2014 to provide the first longitudinal analysis of the macro‐level relationship between undocumented immigration and violence. The results from fixed‐effects regression models reveal that undocumented immigration does not increase violence. Rather, the relationship between undocumented immigration and violent crime is generally negative, although not significant in all specifications. Using supplemental models of victimization data and instrumental variable methods, we find little evidence that these results are due to decreased reporting or selective migration to avoid crime. We consider the theoretical and policy implications of these findings against the backdrop of the dramatic increase in immigration enforcement in recent decades.
... In the year 2019, there are 839 murder cases witnessed, while in the year 2018, the number of murder cases was 786 and in the year 2017-18 used to be 188 (Indiatimes, 2020a). As opined by Gutierrez and Kirk (2017), 46% of several activities are conducted by individuals who belong to the poverty affected regions. Article analysis of two States Assam and Telangana criminal activities rate of the states are not due to their poverty. ...
Abstract
Aim: In this research paper different factors that are able to make impact on criminal activities are being critically evaluated. This paper is aiming to prove different geographic regions have different issues that enhances criminal activities. Therefore, different states of India have different rate of criminal activities. Methods: The methods of the topic have been as per the statistical analysis where the entire information has been related with the southernmost crime rate higher and a very low crime rate in the easternmost states.
Main findings: The highest crime rate has been recorded at Tamil Nadu with lowest in Nagaland and Mizoram. The rate of crime increases with religious nature and nature of the crime as per metropolitan culture. The rate has been higher due to wealth, and other factors where the value of the regression has been higher between the northern and southern region respectively. The nature of the murder crime rate has been found to be higher in South Africa compared to online dating scam in Malaysia. Along with that, as a prime part of South-East Asian countries, the crime rates of Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam and Hong Kong have also discussed with the help of graphical illustration.
Conclusion: The selected states are Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Punjab, Haryana, Assam, Telangana, Karnataka, Nagaland etc. it has also been identified in different states criminal activities during 2020 get reduced compared with criminal activities in 2019. Punjab is ranking on top in the India due to Drug cases as 35.8% of drug cases in the country belong to Punjab as well. Moreover, it has also been summarised that Vietnam has a higher crime index rather than other south-east Asian countries.
... 229 Another found that crimes were particularly underreported in heavily immigrant neighborhoods. 230 A third found that reporting of crimes tends to increase with the age of the victim, so that neighborhoods with older residents will likely report a higher percentage of crimes. 231 These issues are not limited to predictive policing. ...
... Xie and Baumer (2019) show that in neighbourhoods with high concentrations of foreign-born immigrants, residents are significantly less likely to report crimes regardless of race and ethnicity while noting that reporting rates depend on whether the counties are traditional or newer immigration destinations. In addition, Gutierrez and Kirk (2017) examined the relationship between the size of both the non-citizen and foreign-born immigrant population within a metropolitan area and the likelihood of crimes being reported to the police. They found that when metropolitan areas experience a 1% increase in the non-citizen and foreign-born immigrant population, the likelihood that a violent crime is reported decreases by approximately 6%. ...
... Moreover, a notable criticism of prior research is that scholars often rely on nationally representative or community-based samples. While this research is valuable in its own right, some scholars have suggested that this sampling strategy may result in omitting immigrant offenders and underestimating the level of crime among the foreign-born (Bersani, Loughran, & Piquero, 2014;Gutierrez & Kirk, 2017;Horowitz, 2001;Taft, 1933). Based on this assessment, research has yet to establish whether criminally involved immigrants engage in more or less crime than native-born offenders (see Bersani et al., 2014 andJennings, Zgoba, Piquero, &Reingle, 2013 for an exception). ...
Empirical research shows that immigrants have lower rates of offending, arrest, and incarceration than the native-born. However, previous work has not examined whether this relationship extends to recidivism. The current study addresses this gap in the literature by comparing recidivism outcomes of 192,556 formerly incarcerated native- and foreign-born individuals released from Florida prisons. Using multiple analytic methods, including logistic regression, propensity score matching, and survival analysis, we find that immigrants are less likely to reoffend than their native-born peers. We conclude with a discussion of our study’s findings for future research and policy and practice.
Gestational exposure to police-reported crime is associated with adverse birth outcomes, but no previous research has evaluated the effects of gestational crime exposure on early childhood health or attempted to disentangle the health effects of neighborhood crime from the effects of neighborhood policing. Using data from 672 Newborn Epigenetics Study participants, we evaluate the effects of gestational exposure to violent crime and racialized drug policing on early childhood blood pressure. We demonstrate that violence and drug policing are consistently associated with increased blood pressure among children born to Black participants but not White or Latinx participants.
Objective
Understand the relationship between criminal accusations, victimization, and mental disorders at a population level using administrative data from Manitoba, Canada.
Method
Residents aged 18 to 64 between April 1, 2007, and March 31, 2012 ( N = 793,024) with hospital- and physician-diagnosed mental disorders were compared to those without. Overall and per-person rates of criminal accusations and reported victimization in the 2011/2012 fiscal year were examined. Relative risks were calculated, adjusting for age, sex, income, and presence of a substance use disorder. The overlap between diagnosed mental disorders, accusations, and victimization with a χ ² test of independence was studied.
Results
Twenty-four percent ( n = 188,693) of the population had a mental disorder over the 5-year time frame. Four to fifteen percent of those with a mental disorder had a criminal accusation, compared to 2.4% of the referent group. Individuals with mental disorders, especially psychotic or personality disorders, were often living in low-income, urban neighborhoods. The adjusted relative risk of accusations and victimization remained 2 to 5 times higher in those with mental disorders compared to the referent group. Criminal accusations and victimization were most prevalent among individuals with a history of attempted suicide (15.2% had an accusation and 8.1% were victims). The risk of victimization in the same year as a criminal accusation was significantly increased among those with mental disorders compared to those without (χ ² = 211.8, P < 0.001).
Conclusions
Individuals with mental disorders are at elevated risk of both criminal involvement and victimization. The identification of these multiply-stigmatized individuals may lead to better intervention and support.
Research Summary
This research leverages a remarkable natural experiment created by recent legislation in Arizona to study the impact of labor market immigration enforcement on crime. We show that Arizona's Mexican immigrant population decreased by as much as 20% in the wake of the passage of a broad‐based “E‐Verify” law requiring employers to verify the immigration status of new employees. In contrast to previous literature that studied traditional law enforcement‐based immigration enforcement programs such as “Secure Communities,” we find evidence that labor market‐based immigration enforcement led to a decline in some types of crime– particularly property crimes.
Policy Implications
It is critical to note that the crime reduction we observe is driven by an unprecedented decline in the share of the immigrant population that is young and male. As such, the effects are purely compositional, suggesting that young immigrant men are no more likely to commit crimes relative to young native men. Given that young immigrant men have high labor market participation and contribute disproportionately to economic output, this research highlights the promise, but also the potentially high costs, of labor market immigration enforcement.
This study estimates the association between sanctuary policies and crime in the United States by exploiting an increase in state and local sanctuary policy adoption in 2014. Counties that adopted sanctuary policies in 2014 experienced a decrease of 17.9 violent crimes per 100,000 inhabitants per year (0.02 percentage points) compared to counties that continued to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE), with the relationship driven by decreases in robberies and assaults. This result implies that sanctuary policies avoid $101 million per year in crime costs. Conversely, ICE cooperation increases crime costs in local communities by $3.28 billion per year.
Secure Communities is a recently introduced immigration enforcement policy in the United States, intended to improve public safety by making it easier to identify and deport criminal immigrants and immigration violators. In this article, we examine the effect of Secure Communities on crime by utilizing the variation in its timing of activation across counties. We extend previous research by exploring potential crime spillovers associated with Secure Communities, in which its activation in one jurisdiction affects crime rates in a neighboring jurisdiction. Estimation results suggest that the activation of Secure Communities influenced crime rates in both the activated area and neighboring areas in important ways. We find that Secure Communities led to a significant crime reduction in the activated area if it is also activated in neighboring areas, but no significant local crime reduction is observed if not activated in neighboring areas. Likewise, its activation is often associated with significant crime spillovers into neighboring areas, but this displacement effect is often completely eliminated if Secure Communities is activated in the neighboring areas as well.
Noncitizens seeking to make sense of US immigration systems encounter a labyrinth of information and deception. This paper is the first national study of scams targeting noncitizens seeking immigration legal services. I construct a county‐year database (N = 3,135 over a four‐year time period, 2011–2014) across secondary data sources to analyze the correlates of immigration scam complaints submitted to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). I find that welcoming counties have more immigration scam complaints, and counties with exclusionary contexts tend to have fewer complaints. The results do not suggest that scams are more prevalent in welcoming contexts, because the actual number of scams is unknown. Instead, we can conclude that noncitizens tend to come forward to report immigration scams in welcoming contexts of reception, even after accounting for exclusionary policies. A robust safety net proved the most reliable predictor of immigration scams reported to the FTC. The concentration of immigration attorneys, legal aid services, and language access was also positively associated with the number of FTC scam reports. Taken together, these results suggest that immigrant‐serving capacity and access to key services support noncitizens who report immigration scams, while hostility toward immigrants may deter them from exercising those same rights. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
Perhaps few decisions have more of an impact on the operational functioning of the criminal justice system than the decision by victims of crime to notify the police. Researchers in the United States and abroad have found that victims often choose not to mobilize the criminal law in the aftermath of a victimization event. A large percentage of property and violent crimes never appear in official crime data estimates. Most remain hidden in the dark figure of crime. Victim nonreporting has numerous implications for criminal justice system processing, crime control policy, and substantive research on the causes and correlates of crime. Studies have long sought to identify the victim-, incident-, and community-based mechanisms that might account for patterns of police notification. Although several important findings have emerged, critical questions remain unanswered. This article provides a critical overview of the causes and consequences of victim nonreporting and charts potential avenues for future research. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Law and Social Science Volume 13 is October 13, 2017. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
Many studies that link immigration and crime focus on assessing rates and explaining incidence. In this article we attempt to elucidate the immigrants' fear of crime and their perceptions of U.S. authorities as these impinge on their relations with the police and on their own insertion in the host society. Based on sixty-one in-depth interviews with immigrants from Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Mexico and on participant observation conducted in Phoenix, Arizona, we identify three immigrant-specific factors that affect immigrants' perceptions of crime and the police. These are: a bifocal lens, that is, the immigrants' former experiences with crime and their homelands' justice system; contacts with U.S. immigration officials; and the social networks through which they learn what to expect in the United States from U.S. police authorities, as well as when and where to expect criminal activity, and who may be a potential criminal.
Beginning with Koss, Gidycz, and Wisniewski’s pathbreaking study, the sexual victimization of female college students has emerged as salient research and policy concern. Building on this earlier work, we used a national, random sample of 4,446 female college students to focus on an issue of continuing importance: the level and determinants of victims’ willingness to report their sexual victimization. The analysis revealed that although few incidents—including rapes—are reported to the police and/or to campus authorities, a high proportion are disclosed to someone else (mainly to friends). Incidents were more likely to be reported to the police when they had characteristics that made them more “believable” (e.g., presence of a weapon or assailant who was a stranger). The use of alcohol and/or drugs by offenders and/or victims had a unique effect, causing students to be more likely to disclose their victimization to friends but not to campus authorities. The implications of the findings for extant debates and for future research are also explored.
Police measures of crime are shaped by victims’ decisions to notify the police. To obtain a better understanding of US crime trends, this study uses the National Crime Victimization Survey to examine geographic differences and temporal trends in crime reporting in New York and other metropolitan areas for the period 1979-2004. We find that net of crime characteristics and survey methodology, the New York metropolitan area showed fewer increases in crime reporting than did other metropolitan areas. These divergent trends suggest that the real differences in the drop of nonlethal violence between New York and other areas may have been smaller than those indicated by police-based crime statistics. We also find that from the early 1990s to 2004, New York showed a sharp decrease in the likelihood of victims perceiving that “police wouldn’t help.” This trend suggests that police reforms in New York City have not resulted in more victims using police-related reasons to explain their nonreporting behavior. Instead, researchers need to develop a broader theoretical framework (not an exclusive focus on police actions) to understand how police- and nonpolice-related factors may explain the geographic variation in the trends of reporting observed in this study.
The National Crime Victimization Survey is used to examine factors that encourage and inhibit victims of domestic violence from calling the police. Victims of domestic violence are less likely than victims of other types of violence to call the police because of their privacy concerns, their fear of reprisal, and their desire to protect offenders, but they are more likely to call for self-protection and because they perceive domestic assaults as more serious. As a result of these and other offsetting factors, victims of domestic violence are just as likely as other victims of assault to call the police.
Various scholars have suggested that neighbourhood social cohesion and confidence in police effectiveness influence the probability
that victims report crime to the police, but this has never been properly tested. Neighbourhood socio-economic disadvantage
is also often assumed to influence reporting, but empirical support is limited. This study examines the effects of these three
characteristics on Dutch victims’ reporting decision. Data from a large-scale victimization survey are merged with data on
characteristics of neighbourhoods to test the hypotheses. Hierarchical logistic modelling is used to analyse the nested data.
The results show that, in addition to crime and victim features, neighbourhood social cohesion and socio-economic disadvantage
affect reporting. Neighbourhood confidence in police effectiveness does not have an effect.
Experts have argued that there are significant barriers to recent immigrants' use of the criminal justice system. This exploratory study, using convenience samples, is among the first to look empirically at the experiences of recent immigrant victims with the criminal justice system in the United States. Contrary to expectations, we found that immigrants reported relatively few problems unique to foreign-born persons in dealing with the police and the courts, and that their satisfaction with the justice system was comparable to levels reported in studies of native-born victims. The results suggest that although recent immigrants' expectations of the criminal justice system may be different from those of native born, the experiences of immigrant victims and their satisfaction with the justice system are similar in many respects to those of native-born victims.
The increased diversity of the U.S. population poses special challenges to the criminal justice system. High levels of immigration to the United States within the past decade require that law enforcement and court organizations understand the concerns of crime victims who are recent immigrants, and facilitate meaningful access to the justice system. Employing survey methodology, this research describes the barriers that immigrants encounter in accessing justice, as they emerged from the responses of police chiefs and prosecutors in the 50 largest cities of the United States. Criminal justice officials believe that failure to report crimes and to cooperate in their prosecution is a significant problem, especially for domestic violence offenses. The results suggest that many metropolitan areas have made some efforts to promote participation of immigrant victims in the criminal justice system. But far more needs to be done to ensure access to justice for this growing segment of society.
In The Behavior of Law, Black (1976) sets forth a theory of law that he argues explains variations in law across societies and among individuals within societies. Black argues that law can be conceived of as a quantitative variable, measured by the number and scope of prohibitions, obligations and other standards to which people are subject. Law varies, according to Black, with other aspects of social life, including stratification, morphology, culture, organization, and social control. Many of Black's principal propositions regarding the quantity of law are tested in this paper with National Crime Survey data on the victim's decision to report a crime to the police. An alternative model that views the quantity of law as depending largely on the gravity of the infraction against legal norms is posed and tested against Black's theory. The data are generally inconsistent with the propositions derived from The Behavior of Law and strongly suggest that a theory attempting to explain the criminal law cannot ignore the gravity of the infraction against legal norms.
Executive Summary Unauthorized immigrants living in the United States are more geographically dispersed than in the past and are more likely than either U.S. born residents or legal immigrants to live in a household with a spouse and children. In addition, a growing share of the children of unauthorized immigrant parents—73%—were born in this country and are U.S. citizens. These are among the key findings of a new analysis by the Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the Pew Research Center, which builds on previous work estimating the size and growth of the U.S. unauthorized immigrant population. A 2008 report by the Center estimated that 11.9 million unauthorized immigrants lived in the United States; it concluded that the undocumented immigrant population grew rapidly from 1990 to 2006 but has since stabilized. 1 In this new analysis, the Center estimates that the rapid growth of unauthorized immigrant workers also has halted; it finds that there were 8.3 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. labor force in March 2008.
Since the mid-1960s there has been a great deal of interest around the world in the use of sample surveys of the general population to study crime. The advantages of doing so have been discussed in detail many times (National Research Council, 1976; Biderman, 1967). Crime surveys have been conducted in many nations, a practice that is continuing despite their heavy cost. Large-scale national surveys have been conducted in the United States, the Netherlands, Australia, Great Britain, and Sweden. Smaller but regular national studies have been carried out in the rest of Scandinavia, and there has been a national survey in Spain. There have been large surveys of victimization in individual cities in Germany, Switzerland, and England. Statistics Canada has completed very large studies of seven major cities, including two surveys of Vancouver, and the Israeli Census Bureau has added victimization questions to a national survey. In addition, small but useful city studies have been conducted in Mexico, Colombia, Israel, and Belgium. The four islands that make up the Dutch Antilles also have been surveyed. The findings of these surveys have accumulated to the point where it is possible to perceive cross-national regularities—or clear inconsistencies—in what they reveal.
This is an article about non-English speaking peoples and the courts. The wave of immigration currently taking place in America brings with it both confusion and problems for the new immigrant when confronted with our judicial system. The primary purpose of this article is to heighten the awareness of officials to the language problems faced by these new immigrants when interfacing with American courts. The article identifies areas of concern that should be addressed by administrators, planners, and judges involved in the delivery of court services to non-English speaking peoples.
A great deal of criminal activity in America goes unrecorded, largely because it is not reported to the police. This pool of unrecorded crime has several consequences: it limits the deterrent capability of the criminal justice system, it contributes to the misallocation of police resources, it renders victims ineligible for public and private benefits, it affects insurance costs, and it helps shape the police role in society. This report examines these problems in light of new crime-victim data gathered in a national sample of the general population. The data suggest that, compared with those incidents which were reported to the police, the reservoir of unreported crime contains a disproportionate number of less serious incidents involving small financial loss, little serious injury, and less use of weapons. Race, in particular, was unrelated to the reporting of crime in the United States in 1973.
Like other immigrant groups, Korean-American offenders victimize their own people. These criminals have operated with near impunity since their victims have been afraid to report crimes to the police. Due to the lack of knowledge of American criminal law and the operations of the justice system in general, Korean immigrants attempt to avoid those institutions in their new homeland that they feared in Korea. The purpose of the present paper is to examine various cultural aspects of serious interpersonal violence among Korean immigrants that lead to official police response. Interpersonal violence seems to be a method of conflict resolution relied upon by Koreans in disputes involving honor. A propensity to punish someone physically who has dishonored another in the form of an insult, cheating, disrespect, or failure to keep one's word—seems to b an acceptable method for redeeming or restoring the honor of the wronged parties. Such manifestations of violence are expressions of power, with physical force often taken to an extreme. The purpose is not just to right a wrong or administer just deserts; it must also serve to demonstrate control.
The decision to report criminal victimizations to the police is an important determinant of the capacity of the criminal justice system to fulfill its mandate. This report analyzes the individual-level determinants of crime reporting, using data generated by the 1973 National Crime Survey conducted by the Bureau of the Census. It examines the impact of three characteristics of victimizations upon their reporting probability: the attributes of their victims, the nature of victim-offender relationships, and the seriousness of the offense. Only the latter appears to be of major significance, although youthful victims are substantially less likely than their elders to report their experiences to the police. The reasons that nonreporters give for their inaction appear to be quite rational, reflecting the probability that anything will come of their cooperation.
Although many efforts have been made during the past several decades to increase the reporting of crime to the police, we know little about the nature of long-term crime-reporting trends. Most research in this area has been limited to specific crime types (e.g., sexual assault), or it has not taken into account possible changes in the characteristics of incidents associated with police notification. In this article, we advance knowledge about long-term trends in the reporting of crime to the police by using data from the National Crime Survey (NCS) and the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) and methods that take into account possible changes in the factors that affect reporting at the individual and incident level as well as changes in survey methodology. Using data from 1973 to 2005, our findings show that significant increases have occurred in the likelihood of police notification for sexual assault crimes as well as for other forms of assault and that these increases were observed for violence against women and violence against men, stranger and nonstranger violence, as well as crimes experienced by members of different racial and ethnic groups. The reporting of property victimization (i.e., motor vehicle theft, burglary, and larceny) also increased across time. Overall, observed increases in crime reporting account for about half of the divergence between the NCVS and the Uniform Crime Reporting Program (UCR) in the estimated magnitude of the 1990s crime decline—a result that highlights the need to corroborate findings about crime trends from multiple data sources.
The literature from developed countries hypothesizes that crime-reporting practices vary by levels of incident-specific, victim-specific, and environment-specific correlates. To date these correlates have not been used to investigate crime-reporting behavior in developing countries, nor have they been explored simultaneously. This research attempts to fill this void by analyzing data from a household victimization survey conducted in Belize, Central America. A crime-reporting model based on research findings from developed nations, especially the United States, is tested. Bivariate findings are presented and a multivariate logistic model is estimated, Contrary to prediction, the findings from the Belize sample are generally similar to those reported in developed nations. As in developed nations, incident-specific correlates play a significant role, individual-specific correlates pray a minor role, and environment-specific correlates play no role in inducing citizens to report a crime to the police. The findings indicate that factors that affect reporting in Belize seem not to be conditioned by the particularistic social structure of policing in that nation.
Over the past three decades, sociolegal scholarship on the rights of noncitizens in the United States has sought to explain rights and exclusions while incorporating new theory regarding racialization, biopolitics, neoliberalism, risk, and states of exception. Early work in this period distinguished between legal and illegal immigration, with a focus on assimilation, ethnicity, and new ethnic enclaves in the case of the former, and an examination of the relationship between membership and movement in the case of the latter. Large-scale restructurings of the immigration enforcement regime have made the distinction between citizens and noncitizens more important than before. Thus, scholars have coined such terms as “crimmigration” to describe the unprecedented convergence of criminal and immigration law, “rescaling” to refer to shifts from national to local enforcement efforts, and “securitization” to denote the infusion of antiterrorist measures within immigration policymaking.
Frustrated by federal inaction on immigration reform, several U.S. states in recent years have proposed or enacted laws designed to stem the flow of illegal immigrants into the U.S. and to facilitate their removal. An underappreciated implication of these laws is the potential alienation of immigrant communities - even law abiding, cooperative individuals - from the criminal justice system. The ability of the criminal justice system to detect and sanction criminal behavior is dependent upon the cooperation of the general public, including acts such as the reporting of crime and identifying suspects. Cooperation is enhanced when local residents believe that laws are enforced fairly. In contrast, research reveals that cynicism of the police and the legal system undermines individuals’ willingness to cooperate with the police and engage in the collective actions necessary to socially control crime. By implication, recent trends toward strict local enforcement of immigration laws may actually undercut public safety by creating a cynicism of the law in immigrant communities. Using data from a 2002 survey of New York City residents, this study explores the implications of perceived injustices perpetrated by the criminal justice system for resident willingness to cooperate with the police in immigrant communities.
This study considers the circumstances under which members of the Muslim American community voluntarily cooperate with police efforts to combat terrorism. Cooperation is defined to include both a general receptivity toward helping the police in antiterror work and the specific willingness to alert police to terror-related risks in a community. We compare two perspectives on why people cooperate with law enforcement, both developed with reference to general policing, in the context of antiterror policing and specifically among members of the Muslim American community. The first is instrumental. It suggests that people cooperate because they see tangible benefits that outweigh any costs. The second perspective is normative. It posits that people respond to their belief that police are a legitimate authority. On this view we link legitimacy to the fairness and procedural justice of police behavior. Data from a study involving interviews with Muslim Americans in New York City between March and June 2009 strongly support the normative model by finding that the procedural justice of police activities is the primary factor shaping legitimacy and cooperation with the police.
This research uses data from the Area-Identified National Crime Victimization Survey to examine the influence of neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage on the likelihood of police notification by victims of violence. The results indicate that neighborhood disadvantage does not significantly affect the likelihood of police notification among robbery and aggravated assault victims. However, a significant curvilinear effect of neighborhood disadvantage is observed for simple assault victims. The implications of these results for community-level crime research and for theoretical perspectives on police notification are discussed.
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.
This article explores the correlates of immediate and short-term psychological distress among victims of burglary, robbery, and nonsexual assault. A panel design was employed. Crime victims were interviewed within 1 month following the incident and again 3 months later. Four sets of predictors were examined: demographics, previctimization adjustment and stress, features of the crime incident, and victims' perceptions. Measures of distress included a range of standard indices of adjustment and symptomatology. Demographic characteristics and victim perceptions accounted for the greatest proportions of variance in the outcome measures at Time 1 and Time 2. The strongest predictors of psychological adjustment at the end of 3 months included adjustment after 1 month, education, victim injury, victims' beliefs that their lives had been endangered during the crime episode, and victims' appraisals of the world as meaningful. Implications for treatment and directions for future studies are discussed.
It is hypothesized that collective efficacy, defined as social cohesion among neighbors combined with their willingness to
intervene on behalf of the common good, is linked to reduced violence. This hypothesis was tested on a 1995 survey of 8782
residents of 343 neighborhoods in Chicago, Illinois. Multilevel analyses showed that a measure of collective efficacy yields
a high between-neighborhood reliability and is negatively associated with variations in violence, when individual-level characteristics,
measurement error, and prior violence are controlled. Associations of concentrated disadvantage and residential instability
with violence are largely mediated by collective efficacy.
Standard methods for the regression analysis of clustered data postulate models relating covariates to the response without regard to between- and within-cluster covariate effects. Implicit in these analyses is the assumption that these effects are identical. Example data show that this is frequently not the case and that analyses that ignore differential between- and within-cluster covariate effects can be misleading. Consideration of between- and within-cluster effects also helps to explain observed and theoretical differences between mixture model analyses and those based on conditional likelihood methods. In particular, we show that conditional likelihood methods estimate purely within-cluster covariate effects, whereas mixture model approaches estimate a weighted average of between- and within-cluster covariate effects.
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