The Victim's Decision to Report Offences to the Police in France: Stating Losses or Expressing Attitudes*

Published date01 May 2010
Date01 May 2010
DOI10.1177/026975801001700203
International
Review
ofVictimology. 2010, Vol.
17,
pp.
179-207
0269-7580/10$10
© A B Academic Publishers -Printed
in
Great Britain
THE VICTIM'S DECISION TO REPORT OFFENCES
TO THE POLICE IN FRANCE: STATING LOSSES
OR
EXPRESSING ATTITUDES*
PHILIPPE ROBERT, RENEE ZAUBERMAN, LISA MICELI, SOPHIE
NEVANEN, EMMANUEL DIDIER1
CESDIP,
France
ABSTRACT
Drawing upon several sets
of
victimisation surveys
in
France, this article examines for the first time for
this country the variables associated with victims' reporting behaviour on the one hand, with their
decision to file a formal complaint on the other. The seriousness
of
the effects
of
the
offence-
material
or
physical -
is
a determining variable which largely confirms previous internationally established
knowledge. However, the specific contribution
of
this study
is
to highlight the role, a minority role
to
be
sure but one that
is
clearly distinguishable,
of
certain attitudes such as punitiveness (among those who
file formal complaints) and scepticism with regard
to
public institutions (among non reporting victims).
In this sense, the study
of
reporting also informs
us
about the more or less confident relationship
between the population and the institutions that bear the responsibility for its security. In order to
consider these types
of
results it
is
necessary for surveys to include not only questions about the factual
elements
of
victimisation but also to delve into the respondents' opinions, so
as
to allow the piecing
together
of
attitudes and types
of
social representation.
Keywords: victimisation survey, reporting, police
Victimisation surveys, which were invented to improve the measurement
of
crime, have also contributed
to
other facets
of
our knowledge.
Of
these, the
study
of
the decision to report is one
of
the most significant. A person who
considers he or she has been the victim
of
conduct punishable by criminal law
can remain passive or else call on a third party for help. The latter might simply
be an intimate, a relative or a friend, but the victim can also go
to
a lawyer, a
doctor, a pharmacist, a psychiatrist, or
to
institutions such
as
a hospital, an
insurance agency, or security personnel, or,
of
course, the police.
Knowledge concerning victims' reporting to the police is crucial.
It
is, first
of
all, a factor that contributes
to
the analysis
of
the intake to the criminal justice
system. While in cases
of
victimless offences2 the police have little
to
jo
on
besides their own initiatives, in the case
of
offences directed at a victim it is
* Translation from the French
by
John Atherton, revised
by
Renee Zauberman.
Correspondence with Renee Zauberman, CESDIP, Immeuble Edison, 43 boulivard
Vaubin, 78320 Guyancour, France (zauberman@cesdip.fr)
180
principally through the victim's decision to report (and to a lesser extent that
of
witnesses) that the police are informed.
Knowledge concerning reportin§ can also make it possible to compare police
statistics and victimisation surveys . In theory, it is the degree
of
willingness
of
the victim to choose to report that can explain the difference between the two.
If
this is not the case, then we should be looking closer into the details
of
the police
handling
of
the information provided by the victim. While it is a relatively
simple matter to know the proportion who report, it is far more important to
fathom the determinants
of
the victim's decision. In this article, we shall take
stock
of
the problem; analyse the factors that determine reporting; seek to
determine what differentiates simply informing the police from filing a formal
complaint; and, finally, analyse the determinants
of
non-reporting.
SITUATING
THE
PROBLEM
Research literature on reporting is to be found in abundance only in those
countries that have a sufficient number
of
surveys and the required number
of
researchers qualified to explore this type
of
problem: that is to say principally
the United States and the United Kingdom, and in a less systematic manner a
group
of
nations from the Netherlands to Germany, though not excluding China.
The sum total
of
the data first points up the wide range
of
reporting rates, ranging
from the quasi-systematic for completed burglaries
of
a main residence and the
completed theft
of
an automobile to a far less frequent rate for sexual assault or
assault
bl
an intimate, with
of
course significant variations from one country to
the
next.
The corpus also indicates the heterogeneity
of
motivations for reporting,
which range from the utilitarian to the punitive, but can
as
well be a quest for
immediate help or simply obedience to a sense
of
civic duty. Finally the research
literature on the subject is in agreement that it is the seriousness ofvictimisation
that is the principal determinant
of
reporting. This conclusion was reached
relatively rapidly in the course
of
the first wave
of
research,
as
shown by the first
synthesis published by Wesley Skogan in 1984.
It
has never been challenged
since. Subsequent findings have dealt mostly with discussions
of
the
significance
of
secondary factors that might have played a role, such as the
victim's socio-economic status, sex, age and race (such as Zhang et al., 2007) or
the type
of
neighbourhood lived in (poor or not, degree
of
social cohesion, etc,
e.g. Goudriaan et al., 2006), or on the other hand the quality
of
police response
to previous cases reported to them (e.g. Xie et al., 2006). The most recent
research has focused on violence (Roberts et al., 2002) (sexual violence
(Williams, 1984), violence against children, violence against a variety
of
minorities such as homosexuals (Dunbar, 2006)) rather than on property
victimisation
6, probably because the network
of
determining factors appeared to
be richer and more diversified in the former case, and also because violence
holds greater fascination than property crime.

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