Police Violence and the Underreporting of Crime

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between police violence and the reporting of crime. Utilizing original data from a large‐scale household survey conducted in Costa Rica from October 2013 to April 2014 (n = 4,200), we find that the observation of police violence significantly reduces citizens’ willingness to report crime. The implications of this finding are explored using a game‐theoretic model of crime, crime reporting, and police misconduct. The model reveals that although the prospect of police violence against criminals may generate a degree of deterrence for criminal behavior, permissiveness toward police violence also raises expectations about the likelihood of police abuse against law‐abiding citizens. Consistent with our empirics, this reduces citizens’ propensity to report crime, thereby fostering a climate of impunity for criminal activity.

Domestic Violence Police Reporting and Resources During the 2020 COVID-19 Stay-at-Home Order in Chicago, Illinois

“…Previous research has shown that witnessing police brutality decreases the likelihood of reporting crimes by reinforcing the belief that police may in fact escalate violence. 26 In today’s digital world, widely circulating images of police violence against Black persons may have reduced trust in police, especially in Chicago, where Black persons account for 74% of fatalities due to police violence but comprise only 29% of the city’s population. 27 Furthermore, many DV survivors are women, 4 and cases of police violence against Black women specifically, may have contributed to an erosion of trust during the pandemic.…”

“Part Man, Part Machine, All Cop”: Automation in Policing

“…For example, in the case of predictive policing, prior cases of inferior, discriminatory or outright illegal policing ("dirty policing") are visible in criminological data ("dirty data") (Richardson, Schultz and Crawford 2019, p. 192), e. g. due to underreporting of sexual crimes (Taylor and Gassner 2010, p. 241 ff. ), racist crimes (Kushnick 1999, ¶1.7) and police violence (Loftin, McDowall and Xie 2017;Gingerich and Oliveros 2018). Following the legal precepts of non-discrimination in policing and counteracting such biases is made all the harder by the fact that there is often little awareness and acknowledgement of these underlying problems and the discriminatory structures which are (at least partially) responsible therefor.…”

Crime drop in Ghana? Some insights from crime patterns and trends

“…The low reporting of crime offers further clarity on the nature of crime trends in Ghana. The underreporting of crime is common in instances of rape, homicides, and domestic violence (Feldman et al 2017;Myers 1980;Gingerich and Oliveros 2018;Loftin et al 2003). A 2011/2013 Afrobarometer survey found that 75% of victims of crime in Ghana did not report the crime to the police (Wambua 2015).…”