Decision Making by Crime Victims: A Multimethod Approach

Abstract

Since most crimes investigated by police result from notification by victims, crime victims can be viewed as the gatekeepers of the criminal justice system. This paper describes the results of a series of studies which employed multiple methodologies to investigate the decisions of property crime victims to notify the police. The four methods used in this research included (a) an archival analysis of police records, (b) interviews with crime victims, (c) simulation studies using college students, and (d) experiments in a field laboratory. Two convergent findings emerged from the data. Social influence was found to be an important determinant of both the decision to call the police and the delay in such notification. If others advised the victim to call the police, the crime was more likely to be reported, but, ironically, the greater the number of people consulted, the longer the delay in reporting the crime. The second convergent finding was that situational factors played a stronger role in affecting delay in notification than did characteristics of the victim. Situational factors included the type of crime and the time of day when it was discovered, as well as the number of others talked to and the type of advice received from them. Several divergent findings across methods raised questions about the relative adequacy of each method for the problems being investigated, and helped identify sources of similarities and differences in the conceptual and operational definitions employed.