Crime victims and the police

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 paper reports some data from the national crime victimisation survey conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in 1975. Earlier surveys of crime victimisation in Australia by Wilson and Brown (1973) and Congalton and Najman (1974) were restricted to specific regions and to relatively small samples, but both revealed substantial under-reporting of crime. This survey covered 18,694 persons throughout the whole of the country. The specific concern of this paper is with the reasons victims give for not reporting to the police the fact that they have been victimised. Most crimes are not reported to the police. If citizens invariably reported all serious victimisations, the costs of maintaining police forces would be noticeably higher than at present; whether or not victims should be encouraged to make greater use of their police in this way can only be answered on the basis of an analysis of the reasons why they refrain from doing so. THE SAMPLE Dwellings for inclusion in the area probability sample were selected from all parts of Australia excluding the Northern Territory, rural regions and locations with populations of fewer than 500 people. Of the 10,500 dwelling sites originally selected, 9,200 contained effective households of which 8,414 provided data for the survey. These households contained 18,694 persons aged 15 years and over, each of whom supplied some data. The household response rate was 91.5 per cent. 1. The authors gratefully acknowledge the assistance given to the Australian Institute of Criminology by the staff of the Australian Bureau of Statistics.