The Impact of Prior Victimization and Socio-Economic Status on People’s Crime-Reporting Behavior

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to determine whether or not prior victimizat ion, along with socio-economic status affect people’s willingness to report crimes to authorities. This study is limited to addressing the effect of prior victimization on willingness to report crimes by 1) the type of victimizat ion (i.e., being a victim of property crimes or a victim of crimes against persons), 2) being a vict im of a crime, regardless of the type of crime versus not being a victim, and 3) the difference in crime-report ing variation between the two. The findings of this research study are based on the analyses of the data that have been collected through a self-administered survey questionnaire distributed to 531 undergraduate university students. Overall, the findings that emerged from this study suggest that prior victimizat ion cannot be considered a good predictor of crime-reporting behavior. Keywords