Willingness to Report Crimes: The Role of Ethnic Group Membership and Community Efficacy

Abstract

Law enforcement experts and observers of immigrant communities have suggested that immigrants are reluctant to report crimes to the police. Various reasons have been advanced to support this idea, ranging from distrust of authorities to fear of retaliation or deportation to lack of confidence in the police. This study examined willingness to report crimes among residents of six ethnic communities in New York City. In spite of the pessimism expressed in the literature, the authors found that large majorities of respondents said that they would report break-ins, muggings, family violence, and (to a lesser extent) drug selling. Persons who said that their ethnic community was likely to work together to solve local problems and those who believed that their community wielded political power were more likely than those whose communities were disenfranchised to say that they would report crimes.