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

The purpose of this study is to determine whether or not prior victimization, 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 victimization (i.e., being a victim of property crimes or a victim of crimes against persons), 2) being a victim of a crime, regardless of the type of crime versus not being a victim, and 3) the difference in crime-reporting 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 victimization cannot be considered a good predictor of crime-reporting behavior.