NCJ Number
99080
Journal
Indian Journal of Criminology Volume: 12 Issue: 2 Dated: (July 1984) Pages: 79-86
Date Published
1984
Length
8 pages
Annotation
A sample of 60 university students in India (30 boys and 30 girls) were tested to determine their attitudes toward the severity of three described crimes and the portrayed police responses to those crimes.
Abstract
The crimes described were a street murder, a fatal road accident, and a gang rape. Subjects were questioned about their attitudes toward and value judgments about these cases. The T-test was applied to the 24 questions relating to the 3 crimes to measure significant differences in responses by subject gender. All subjects had similar views as to the seriousness of the street murder as judged by its intrinsic nature and public impact. They also generally agreed on police preventive responsibilities in such offenses as well as the victim's contribution to the crime and the need for police-citizen cooperation. Although men viewed the fatal road accident to be a serious incident, it was not considered as serious as the murder; however, the women viewed the fatal accident and the murder to be of equal severity. There was general agreement among the subjects about the police response to the fatal accident in terms of the services offered. The women viewed the gang rape much more seriously than did the men, assigning it a severity greater than the fatal accident and even the murder. Women were also less satisfied with the police response to the rape than were the men. The gender of the subjects was the only independent variable considered in the study. Tabular data and 19 references are provided.