Victim Willingness to Report Crime to Police: Does Procedural Justice or Outcome Matter Most?

Abstract

Research has shown that procedural justice is an important predictor of victims’ satisfaction with the criminal justice system. What remains relatively unclear, however, is whether procedural justice is more important to victims than other instrumental factors, such as the outcome favorability of their encounters with police. Some studies find that victims are more satisfied with the criminal justice system when they have received a favorable outcome, while others show that procedural justice elements dominate their concerns. To date, only three studies have investigated this issue in the context of victims’ willingness to cooperate with the police. Again, however, the results have been inconclusive. The present study utilizes survey data collected from a representative sample of 1,204 Australians to show that the effect of procedural justice on victims’ willingness to report crime to police is context specific. For some victim types, procedural justice is more important, while for other victim types, instrumental factors dominate their decision to report crime.

• procedural justice
• victims of crime
• police
• crime reporting

Notes

1. Participants (or a representative) contacted the project’s toll-free number or e-mail address to indicate they were unable to complete the survey due to disability, travel commitments, or death.

2. The sample was compared to 2006 Australian Census data. It was found that the sample was generally representative of the Australian population in terms of gender, employment status, and state of residence. Departures from the census distributions were fairly minor in most cases. The largest departures from census data can be found in the educational status and age of survey respondents. University educated Australians were more likely to complete the survey (overrepresented by 16.67%) and respondents younger than 40 were underrepresented (by about 26.69%; for details see Murphy, Murphy, & Mearns, 2010). These patterns are not uncommon for mail-based surveys, but they may have implications for victimization status in the present study. For example, younger people and those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds are more likely to be victims of sexual and physical assault (Kennedy & Forde, 1990). These victim types may therefore be underrepresented in the present study (see note 4 for figures).

3. The biggest overlap in victimization type was between the burglary and vandalism categories.

4. When asked about whether they had been the victim of these six types of crimes in the preceding 12 months, 67 respondents indicated they had been burgled (5.5% of the overall sample or 18% of the burglary victims), 34 had their motor vehicle stolen, 216 indicated they had property that was vandalized, 22 had been physically assaulted, 3 had been sexually assaulted, and 21 had experienced domestic violence. Importantly, property victimizations experienced in the previous 12-month period closely matched those reported by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (2010), but were slightly overrepresented in our data (e.g., 5.5% of our respondents experienced burglary victimization in the preceding 12 months versus 3.3% in the ABS data). The personal victimization categories, however, were slightly underreported in our study (e.g., 1.8% of our respondents experienced physical assault in the previous 12-month period versus 3.1% in the ABS data). The small number of victimizations in the preceding 12-month period prevented us from examining the effects of procedure versus outcome across the different victim types. Approximately 33% of the respondents who had been victimized in the preceding 12-month period indicated they had reported the incident to police.

5. Interestingly, when data for all victim types were combined as one homogenous group (N = 638), it was found that procedural justice mattered more than police effectiveness for predicting reporting behavior. Outcome favorability also predicted reporting behavior, but like the analyses conducted with the separate victim groups, this effect disappeared once the procedural justice and police effectiveness variables were entered into the model. It should be noted that for the nonvictims of crime group (N = 447), procedural justice (not police effectiveness) also dominated their willingness to report crimes to police. This confirms prior research in the field with nonvictims (e.g., Murphy et al., 2008).

6. In fact, only 33% of respondents who indicated they had been victimized in the 12-month period preceding the survey reported the victimization to police.