THE INFLUENCE OF CITIZEN INTERACTION WITH THE POLICE ON CRIME-REPORTING BEHAVIOR: ITS MANIFESTATIONS AMONG UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

Citizen’s crime-reporting is generally low, with a number of factors affecting its prevalence and incidence. Research suggests thatthere is an interrelationship between the type of contacts citizens have with the police (e.g., citizen-initiated or police-initiated), attitudestoward the police, police behavior, and crime-reporting behavior. To determine whether citizen interactions with the policeinfl uence crime-reporting behavior and attitudes toward the police, this study tested four research hypotheses. The fi ndings of thisstudy suggest that predictors such as citizen-initiated contacts, police-initiated contacts, frequency of those contacts, and exposureto media about police misconduct cannot be used as a group but rather individually to predict all three different levels of crimereportingbehavior (i.e., reporting of less serious crimes, reporting of medium-level crimes, and reporting of serious crimes).