Crime victims and the police

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Over half of all the crimes which occur in Australia are not reported to the police. for various reasons the victims do not make any official complaint, and it is of considerable interest to psychologists as well as to criminal justice personnel to examine these reasons in detail. A recent survey conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics makes it possible to do this. This survey established that the most common reason for non‐reporting was that the victims considered that the offence was ‘too trivial’, but a large number of victims expressed the view that ‘the police could not do anything about it’. Marked differences in the reasons for non‐reporting were found for different types of crime, and some differences were also found according to the sex, age, educational attainment and marital status of the victims. A comparison with American reasons for non‐reporting showed considerable similarity, but American victims are more inclined than Australians to say that the ‘police could not do anything about it' and are less inclined to say that the offence was ‘too trivial’. American victims are more likely to report offences to persons other than police.

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: