NCJ Number
80849
Date Published
1980
Length
552 pages
Annotation
This volume reports a study contracted by West Germany's criminal justice agency to examine ways to develop a criminalistic-criminological crime index that would reflect police reports' crime counts and the reality of the crime picture, tapped from such sources as public crime perception.
Abstract
Among the approaches the project considered was the U.S. delinquency seriousness index developed by Sellin and Wolfgang. Basic concepts in the German survey's formulation were that (1) individuals' crime perceptions reflect their fundamental attitudes toward life and (2) a sense of interior security derives from a complex of positive and pacified governmental and social conditions. The 14-item survey instrument queried citizen perceptions of neglected aspects of crime as a social problem, crime as a personal threat, crime increase in general and by specific offense, enforcement and prevention policies and practices, stereotyped views of offenders, and seriousness ratings of various offenses. Interviews were conducted in October 1976 and April 1978 with a representative sample of the private households in Germany. Crime as a priority problem was mentioned by 17 percent of the respondents; fear of crime was expressed only in relation to close social environments, i.e., neighborhoods; and satisfaction with police performance was good. Thus, enhancing the feeling of internal security would have to be approached at the neighborhood level and require a more complex commitment than merely increasing police visibility. The seriousness ratings indicated that citizens perceived some white-collar crimes as 'very bad' although these crimes are not included in the classical crime categories. It is concluded that police crime statistics should continue to be enhanced by various population surveys of this kind. Footnotes, tables, and approximately 180 references are given.