Witnessing Crime

Many individuals experience crime as victims. However, many more individuals witness crime. We study how both experiences, being a witness to crime and being a victim of crime, impact crime-related perceptions, spanning confidence in institutions of the justice system, perceptions of neighborhoods, and personal safety. Combining waves of the Crime Survey for England and Wales from 2001-18 we document: (i) witnessing crime is twice as prevalent as victimization; (ii) while victimization rates have fallen by 32% over our study period, rates of witnessing crime have remained unchanged over time; (iii) violent crime constitutes a greater share of all crime over time; (iv) rates of witnessing violent crime have risen by 28%, which has 10 times as many witnesses per incident than other crimes. We then show that crime-related perceptions negatively associate with both experiences, with witnessing crime having stronger negative associations with confidence in institutions and views of local neighborhoods, while victimization is more strongly associated with feelings of personal safety. At a final stage, we consider implications for measuring the social cost of crime if witnessing experiences are also accounted for. We show: (i) the aggregate social costs of crime based only on victims have fallen by 17% over our study period; (ii) the aggregate social costs borne by witnesses have risen by 36%; (iii) once victim and witness costs aggregated, the total social costs of crime have remained relatively unchanged over time. By incorporating witnessing experiences into measuring the costs of crime, our analysis shed lights on a phenomenon observed in many countries: the general perception that crime is rising, a view unanchored from persistent declines in the actual incidence of crime.