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The Interface between the Scottish Police Service and the Public as Victims of Crime: Victim Perceptions
CHAPTER SEVEN: DISCUSSION, CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
It is important to remember that this study specifically relates to the experiences of victims of volume crime and thus, by definition, most of the crimes concerned were relatively minor and routine. This would clearly have coloured the police response, including the degree of priority given to reports of such crimes. Nevertheless, the Inspectorate's decision to commission this research reflects the importance that is placed upon the response of Scottish police services to such relatively everyday crimes and their victims.
Overall, victims interviewed for this study expressed satisfaction with the service they had received from the police. Where they had complaints, they often indicated that they had nevertheless received the best possible response given the perceived limitations upon the police in terms of resources. Many respondents expressed frustration about the wider criminal justice system, and blamed agencies other than the police for the problems they experienced.
As one might expect, response times differed according to the nature of the reported offence. Respondents in this study generally understood why this was the case, and accepted that property crimes were less serious and less deserving of a rapid response than offences where people were put in danger. In those few cases where people had felt endangered, they were generally satisfied with the response time to their report. Housebreaking victims had higher expectations (in terms of response time and more generally) and tended to express higher levels of satisfaction than victims of vehicle related crimes. There was no evidence, in this study, that victims abused the emergency '999' service, and many expressed indignation about its inappropriate use in cases of property or minor crime.
Advice given by the police to victims appeared to be seen differently by corporate and individual victims. At times, crime prevention advice of the kind which corporate victims welcomed (and tended to act upon) was not so well received by the individual victims. Individual victims were more likely to perceive such advice as insensitively delivered and as blaming them for their victimisation. This would seem to have implications both for initial and continuing training of police officers: many victims, while praising officers' general professionalism and the service given, felt that this aspect of the service could be improved. Greater sensitivity seems to be required in responding to personal as opposed to corporate victims, even in the case of relatively minor property and vehicle related offences. For example, it matters a good deal how a police officer tells a housebreaking victim that their property is statistically likely to be targeted again in the near future. For this information to be useful, it is important that it be linked to further advice about how to prevent revictimisation: otherwise, it can seem uncaring or insensitive to the individual victim. Individual victims are also more likely to be dealing with the police in that role for the first time, so that they are likely to know less about the system and how it works than are some corporate victims, many of whom are staff of large companies who deal with crimes almost routinely. This, too, has implications for how the individual victim is treated by police officers. Staff training needs to include information about the likely reactions and needs of victims of crime, emphasising the potential for dramatic effects, even in minor cases, when the victim is predisposed to respond badly to becoming a victim. Housebreaking victims were more likely to be given information about other sources of support (such as from Victim Support) than were vehicle related crime victims.
Although the numbers involved are small, it also appears from this study that there are gender differences in the ways in which crime prevention information is provided. Women respondents generally felt that they had been given little information about the criminal justice process and what would happen to their case in the future, whereas men were given such information more routinely. Some male respondents described receiving clear but quite detailed information about forensic tests and the workings of other criminal justice agencies. A few women respondents who had been victims of housebreaking also commented that they found the way in which they were told that their property was likely to be targeted again was insensitive.
The more general issue of information provision figured largely in this study, not surprisingly given its prominence in previous research on victims and the police. Victims complained that they were told by investigating officers that they would be kept informed, but that in reality it was very difficult to find out about the progress of the cases they were involved in. It was also difficult to get property back when it had been taken for forensic purposes. The idea of a named contact officer was welcomed in principle, but many victims said that they found it difficult to contact the person concerned. There was also a perception (particularly on the part of corporate victims) that the criminal justice system was insufficiently 'joined-up'. This was perceived to waste police officers' time by failing to deal with some offenders for what were seen as extraneous reasons, for example cases being dropped by the Procurator Fiscal.
In a sense, it might almost be better if police officers stopped telling victims that they would be kept informed. What would be better still, however, would be the establishment of a way of ensuring that such offers were routinely honoured in practice. The new Victim Information and Advice Service may offer a solution to this problem in the more serious cases, but few of these fall into the category of volume crime and none of the respondents in this study mentioned having any contact with its staff. It is clear both from the literature and from the comments of many of the respondents in this study, that victims welcome knowing what happened to offenders in court, and when and why 'their' cases are closed. Priority should perhaps be given to ensuring that at the very least, this information is routinely communicated to victims in order to provide them with an opportunity for closure. Of the respondents in this study, older people tended to be less proactive in pursuing the named contact officer: it was the younger victims who tried to make use of this service and expressed frustration at the difficulty of getting hold of the officer concerned. Corporate victims were also relatively unlikely to seek such information.
Victims' expectations of the police were generally not particularly high. The victims interviewed had low expectations insofar as the apprehension, prosecution or conviction of perpetrators were concerned, and they generally did not expect to recover stolen property. To some extent, people appeared to have come to accept crime as something with which one has to live. It may be that increased public awareness of crime statistics has led people to develop a greater understanding of the reality of low clear-up rates, particularly in the case of volume crimes. There is thus a degree of stoicism on the part of victims, and a routine approach to volume crime by the police which accepts the reality that only a relatively small proportion of cases will be cleared up successfully. This seemed to be reflected in the ways in which victims were treated by officers. In some cases, victims reported that they found this 'routine' approach uncaring or unhelpful. Higher levels of satisfaction with the service provided by the police were observed in rural areas. Generally lower levels of satisfaction were observed in the urban areas, where there were also larger numbers of repeat victims.
The general presentation of police officers was important to victims: they frequently commented upon the level of friendliness, courtesy, attentiveness, reassurance and the amount of time officers spent on interviewing them. In a number of cases, approval of officers' professionalism was linked by respondents to their perceived high levels of training. 'Well trained' officers were perceived as more professional.
As in a number of other research studies, satisfaction levels with the police were generally high on first contacting them, but tailed off over time. This is undoubtedly, at least in part, due to the issue of the police service failing to provide information on the progress of cases, as discussed earlier. It also related, in a few cases, to victims' perceptions that they had been blamed for becoming victims. Clearly, the issue of victim-blaming needs to figure largely in police training. Victims tended to remember and resent off-the-cuff comments which they perceived as critical of their failure to secure their property appropriately or to anticipate the possibility of offences being committed against them. In a small number of cases, police failure to show that they understood the level of loss - emotional or financial - sustained by victims was also resented. The theft of a bicycle can, as one respondent pointed out, be just as inconvenient as the theft of a BMW, but the police response does not always reflect this perception on the part of victims.
Recommendations
The issue of crime prevention advice would appear to need reviewing. The study found evidence of gender differences in the ways in which victims were treated, and although there may be good reasons for this, it appears that men are routinely given more information about what is likely to happen next than women are. Corporate victims also tended to respond more favourably to receiving such advice than individual victims did: for the corporate victim, the issues are less personal. The police officers who respond to crime reports need to give information in consistent ways which victims find supportive. This is in part a training issue, but it also needs to be kept under review as part of dealing with individual cases sensitively. The provision of an information leaflet for victims might alleviate some of the difficulties described, but the main issue is one of victim awareness and sensitivity.
Although some respondents spoke highly of the training they believed police officers to have received, their descriptions of the ways in which reports were dealt with sometimes suggested that officers had poor understanding of the likely effects of volume crimes upon their victims. Domestic housebreaking victims were routinely referred to Victim Support, but only a very small minority took up this suggestion, even where they were apparently quite severely affected by the crime. In part, this may be because officers had little knowledge about the working of Victim Support and the actual services it could offer. The service received by victims from the police would be improved if officers' training equipped them better to understand how victims experience their treatment by the criminal justice system.
The issue of information provision to victims also needs to be reviewed. Police officers need to understand that if they give an undertaking to keep a victim informed about the progress of the case, this is perceived as a personal commitment rather than expressing a general hope that this is how the system will treat the victim. Police officers' training needs to reflect this reality. The named officer system, although supported in principle by respondents, does not appear to be working well. Individual officers who work on a shift system and have to give priority to urgent matters, are not proving sufficiently accessible to members of the public wanting to find out how cases are progressing - and these police officers are not necessarily in the best position to provide such information anyway. Better ways of providing this information need to be found, perhaps building upon the experience of the Victim Information and Advice service in more serious cases.
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