Crime Victims' Experiences of Police Interviews and Their Inclination to Provide or Omit Information

Abstract

Ulf Holmberg is a veteran police officer of 30 years' service in Sweden. He has worked in a number of different departments, including spending 15 years as an investigator of violent and sexual crimes. He has recently been awarded his PhD. ABSTRACT This research concerns crime victims' experiences ofSwedish police interviews and their inclination to provide or omit information in such interviews. A group of rape or aggravated assault victims, consisting of 178 women and men, answered a questionnaire in this explorative study, which revealed that police officer behaviour in interviews was mainly calm and obliging. Results from factor analyses show that these crime victims perceived police attitudes to be characterised by either dominance or humanity. While being interviewed, crime victims either responded with feelings of anxiety or feelings of being respected, the latter of which encouraged them to be cooperative. Logistic regressions revealed that interviews marked by dominance and responses of anxiety are significantly associated with crime victims who omit information. Interviews marked by humanity, responses of feeling respected, and cooperation are significantly associated with crime victims who provide information.

Establishing and Maintaining Rapport in Investigative Interviews of Traumatized Victims: A Qualitative Study

“…This corresponds with other research on the Utøya investigative interviews which described different ways the police interviewers showed support to the victims during the interview (Jakobsen et al, 2016), and, how factors like empathic police officers and being able to provide a coherent narrative contributed to a positive interview experience (Langballe & Schultz, 2017). Even though empathy has not been clearly defined in investigative interviewing (Oxburgh & Ost, 2011), which makes it challenging to know when it is occurring, it is still considered important for the development of rapport (Dando & Oxburgh, 2016;Holmberg, 2004a;Madsen & Holmberg, 2015;Vanderhallen & Vervaeke, 2014).…”

“…Holmberg (2004a) examined how victims of rape and aggravated assault perceived the style, attitudes and responses of the police interviewer in their respective investigative interview. The study showed the victims' experience of two police interviewing styles: the dominant and the humanitarian approach.…”

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

“…In their study, Xei et al found that the greater the police efforts following the most recent victimization of an individual, the greater the likelihood that that individual will report subsequent victimization events to the police. Furthermo re, consistent with Hickman and Simpson's [12] and Ho lmberg's [13] research findings, Xei et al 's research shows that a positive police response to prior vict imization (i.e., if the offender who committed the crime against the victim was arrested) encouraged victims to report subsequent crimes to the police. Regarding vicarious reporting of crimes 1 to the police, Xei et al 's research shows that victimization of, fo r example, another household member d id not have an effect on an individual's crime-reporting behavior 2 .…”

“…Research shows that victimizat ion experiences have a positive influence on crime-reporting behavior. In this context, emp irical evidence suggests that those who have been previously victimized by crime are mo re likely to report crimes to the police [8,47,48]. Of the two types of victimizations (i.e., crimes against property vs. crimes against persons), as discussed above, research shows that victims of property crimes are more likely to report crimes to the police in general.…”

“…Of the two types of victimizations (i.e., crimes against property vs. crimes against persons), as discussed above, research shows that victims of property crimes are more likely to report crimes to the police in general. Additionally, research also shows that as the severity of crimes and frequency of their occurrence increases, so does the likelihood of reporting those crimes to the police, especially crimes that involve some kind of weapon [5,8,10,13,22,36,37,45,46 see also 14,16,35]. However, what makes the inclusion of prior vict imization relevant to this study is that there is a number of studies that do not support the above conclusions[see 11,34,49,].…”