Environmental drivers of delays in reporting crimes

Abstract

Purpose

Extensive literature studies the causes of crime and crime reporting behaviour. In contrast, there is hardly any scholarship on delays in reporting a crime and what drives them. Understanding delays in reporting crimes is important for various reasons, for example, because they could decrease the likelihood of an arrest or lead to an issue with the statute of limitations. This paper is the first to analyse the delay in reporting crimes and environmental drivers of these delays.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors construct a novel data set combining all crimes reported in New York City from 2006 to 2020 (N = 2,442,288) with station-level data on weather variables (temperature, rainfall, relative humidity, visibility and wind speed) and four types of air pollutants (carbon monoxide, ozone, sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide). Matching these three data sets using the geolocation occurs at an hourly frequency. Importantly, the crime data provided by the NYPD allows us to control for several other factors that could potentially affect crime reporting behaviour.

Findings

The authors show that 30 percent of reported crimes in New York City were reported with a delay. The average reporting delay was 10.79 days. Carbon monoxide influences for delays in reporting violent crimes and rainfall affects delays in reporting property crimes. Relative humidity, as a driver of wet bulb temperature, affects delays in reporting violent crimes as well.

Research limitations/implications

The authors present novel facts about delays in reporting crimes and how these are related to weather and air pollution. The authors’ findings have implications for government regulation of air pollution as well as for real-time crime forecasting. They should also aid victim support groups in providing services.

Originality/value

This paper is the first to analyse the impact of environmental factors on the delay in reporting crimes.

Citation

Wesselbaum, D. (2023), "Environmental drivers of delays in reporting crimes", Policing: An International Journal, Vol. 46 No. 2, pp. 328-346. https://doi.org/10.1108/PIJPSM-09-2022-0124