Does Recent Victimization Impact Confidence in the Criminal Justice System?

Abstract

This study assesses whether recent victimization influences one’s confidence in the criminal justice system. Specifically, the study tests whether the predictors of confidence in major types of actors in the justice system are different for victims and nonvictims. British Crime Survey (BCS) data are analyzed using a series of structural equation models with multiple group methods. Overall, the findings support the idea that there is little difference between victims and nonvictims in how views of legal actors predict overall confidence. Additionally, prosecutors are slightly more influential on system confidence, regardless of victimization experience. Policy implications and future research directions are discussed.

Keywords:

• victims
• British Crime Survey
• confidence
• procedural justice
• multiple group analysis

Notes

1. “Material from Crown copyright records made available through the Home Office and the UK Data Archive has been used by permission of the Controller of Her Majesty’s Stationary Office and the Queen’s Printer for Scotland” (GN 33174 British Crime Survey, Additional Agreement on Conditions of Use, p. 1). Analysis and interpretation of these data are the responsibility of the authors.

2. The BCS often includes an Ethnic Boost dataset which could be merged with the core sample in an attempt to make the sample more representative; however, this Ethnic Boost sample was not collected for 2007–2008, and was therefore not available for this study.

3. Van de Walle and Raine (2008) used seven BCS items for their principal components analysis; however, one item (confidence that the Criminal Justice System respects the rights of people accused of committing a crime) loaded substantially lower than the other items (.27 for this item compared to .65 and above for the other six items) (see p. 69). Consequently, this item was not included in the current model.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Research Service Award, National Institute of Mental Health [NIMH T32 MH 18911]. Preliminary findings were presented at the American Society of Criminology Conference in San Francisco, California, in November 2010.