Crime Incidents and Victim Demographics: An Examination of Reporting Behaviours

Abstract

The present study used data from the National Crime Victimization Survey from 1994 to 2020 to examine reporting behaviours of respondents. The study aimed to identify if the presence of a weapon, and an offender being a stranger, impacted whether a victim reports the crime to law enforcement. Demographic variables (e.g., sex, age and income) and crime incident-related variables (e.g., relationship to the offender, distance from home, violent crime and the number of crime incidents) were used to examine the effect on reporting behaviour. Two binary logit models were run and found that the presence of a weapon, the offender being a stranger, victims who are female, a closer distance to the respondent’s home, violent crime and fewer number of crime incidents in the last year were associated with higher odds of reporting. The odds of reporting a crime were over two times larger when the offender had a weapon, providing support for weapons continuing to impact reporting behaviour. An interaction effect was run and suggests that the year of victimization does not impact the relationship between weapons and reporting behaviour.