Victims of Crime Still Unwilling to Report

January 7, 2010 |
Valor

The Police Foundation released their December 2009 issue of Ideas in American Policing, a series of papers focused on issues pertaining to law enforcement, policy makers, scholars and practitioners. In this issue, entitled “Customer Satisfaction: Crime Victims’ Willingness to Call the Police” the Police Foundation published a national survey completed by the President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice. This national survey focused on crime victimization and  the “situational aspects of crime reporting.”
The survey consisted of 206 women incarcerated at the Hennepin County Adult Detention Facility in Minneapolis. From the women’s responses, one of the commonalities they found was that:

Women who had experienced the most violence were the least likely to report their violence to the police; among those who did not report being violently victimized, those with the most violent histories reported being very dissatisfied with the police response.

Other reasons the women gave for not reporting included that they didn’t feel they needed the help, fear of the perpetrator(s), didn’t want to be a “snitch”, they didn’t want anyone to know and they didn’t believe the police would do anything. The survey goes on to discuss other reasons why women do not report crimes against them as well as satisfaction and dissatisfaction with police response if they did report to law enforcement.
To read the full report, click here.