Some people don’t call 911 after a crime has been committed against them.
However, IPRC researchers found that individuals who report being victims of crime to police are less likely to be victimized in the future compared to those who don’t do so.
The new study, published July 28 in the journal PLOS ONE, looked at a national cohort of over 18,000 people who experienced some type of crime: interpersonal violence, including sexual assault, robberies, threatened rape and threatened assault, and property crimes such as burglary and theft (including motor vehicle theft and pickpocketing).
The study found that those who reported a crime were 22% less likely to experience repeat victimization. Future interpersonal violence victimizations were 20% lower when initial victimization was reported to police, and future theft victimizations were 27% lower. Future burglaries victimizations, however, did not decline with police reporting.
See CBS2 news story on this study.
The results, the researchers think, are due to increased awareness of victims, police actions and victim services such as mental and physical health services.
They conclude that an increase in reporting of crimes, therefore, may be important for crime prevention and control.
Females in the study were more likely to report initial victimization than males, African-Americans more than whites, and high school or more educated than less than high school educated. Burglary was the most often reported initial victimization (59%), followed by interpersonal violence (52%) and theft (34%).
Despite the findings, only 41% of study participants reported their initial victimization to police. Low reporting of victimization may be due to fears of retaliation from offenders and perceived triviality of the crime, among others.
The data came from the 2008 – 2012 National Crime Victimization Survey, which assesses the rates of non-fatal crime victimization in the U.S.
The research team included IPRC’s Dr. Carri Casteel and lead author Dr. Shabbar Ranapurwala, as well as Dr. Mark Berg from the UI Department of Sociology.
Read more about other violence research IPRC is doing in the areas of bullying/cyberbullying, suicide prevention, rape prevention, and workplace violence.