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INTRODUCTION
In the year of 2012; 10,189,902 criminal offenses took place in the USA and were made known to law enforcement (FBI Uniform Crime Reports 2012). Another 3-3.4 million crimes were estimated to have been committed and not reported (Bureau of Justice Statics 2012), making for a total of around 13,189,902 crimes committed in the year of 2012. This figure of unreported crime is referred to as the dark figure of crime and will never truly be known. This figure exists for a number of reasons including, fear of the victim to come forward, lack of resources available to the victim, lack of understanding by the victim regarding his or her options, and lastly the lack of help from outsiders. This lack of help can best be referred to as the bystander effect. The bystander effect is the social psychological phenomenon that takes place when individuals do not offer any type of assistance to a victim of a crime or medical emergency. (Henslin 2005). Note, this theory does not only apply to victims of crime, but also to victims of medical or physical emergencies. This theory was originally tested in 1986 by John M. Darley and Bibb Latene in reaction to the famous rape and murder case of Kitty Gonovese in 1964 and has since been further examined. The key components that contribute to the bystander effect include diffusion of responsibility, personal cost of getting involved, type of crime, relationships and exposure to, or knowledge of crime.
DIFFUSION OF RESPONSIBILITY
The first, and perhaps biggest issue, when it comes to the lack of involvement by civilians who witness a crime, or emergence, is the diffusion of responsibility. This is the concept that some one else will help the victim because of the amount of other people arou...
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...ocial Issues 40(1):9-26.
Hart, Timothy C., and Terance D. Miethe. 2008. “Exploring Bystander Presence and Intervention in Nonfatal Violent Victimization: When Does Helping Really Help?” Violence and Victims 23(5):637-650.
Henslin, James M. 2005. Sociology: a down-to-earth approach. Boston: Pearson/A and B.
Katz, Jennifer, and Jessica Moore. 2013. “Bystander Education Training for Campus Sexual Assault Prevention: An Initial Meta-Analysis.” Violence and Victims 28(6):1054-1067.
Nicksa, Sarah C. 2013. “Bystander’s Willingness to Report Theft, Physical Assault, and Sexual Assault: The impact of Gender, Anonymity, and Relationship With the Offender.” Journal of Interpersonal Violence 29(2):217-236.
Wenik, Jack. 1985. “Forcing the Bystander to Get Involved: A Case for a Statute Requiring Witnesses to Report Crime.” The Yale Law Journal 94(7):1787-1806
Kitty Genovese case led to the development of the 911 emergency call system and inspired a long line of research led by psychologists Bibb Latané and John Darley around the time of 1970 into what circumstances lead bystanders to help someone in need. They discovered that, the more people available to help, the less likely any individual person would help—a phenomenon they called the “bystander effect.” If you are the only one around when an elderly person stumbles and falls, the responsibility to help is yours alone, but, with more people present, your obligation is less clear. Latané and Darley called this the “diffusion of responsibility” (CSI). A more recent case of the bystander effect was when assault victim Marques Gains laid motionless in the street due to by a hit-and-run; traffic whizzed past along with a few people stopped and seemed to stand over Gaines, who was crumpled near the curb on North State Street. No one tried to lift him from the pavement or block traffic. The lack of action by passers-by cost the hotel cocktail server his life after a cab turned the corner and drove over him. Experts says that a traumatic or odd event occurring in a public setting triggers an array of social and cultural cues and, combined with human nature, often leads to the lack of action by witnesses
In 1964 Catherine ‘Kitty’ Genovese was murdered and raped outside of her New York apartment in the early morning hours of 3 a.m. Her case was one that shocked all of America to its very core. The killer and the witnesses to the crime show the start of disassociation within society in the three theories that are applied throughout the following pages: Rational Choice, Anomie and Routine Activity. The development of the bystander effect and the diffusion of responsibility and its significant harms to both society and its moral compass in
Darley and Latané conducted several experiments to achieve a goal to explain the psychology behind the bystander effect. The several dozen experiments conducted within 12 years ended with similar results. The experiments involved placing a participant either alone or with other participants and then staging an emergency scenario. Both Darley and Latané took note of the time it took the participants to respond to the emergency situation, and whether or not they took intervention measures. A frequent outcome of all the experiments was the presence of other participants prevented the participants from helping. In one experiment by Darley and Latané, subjects were positioned in three different treatment conditions. Which entailed being alone in the room, being with two other participants, and with two confederates acting as if to be normal participants. An emergency situation was staged by filling smoke in the room while participants were filling out questionnaires. The participants who were alone in the room, 75 percent reported the smoke. On the other hand, only 38 percent of participants in the room with two other individuals reported the emergency. In the case of the final group, the two confederates took notice of the smoke but ignored it, causing only 10 percent of the participants reporting the emergency (Darley
Victimology is a scientific research and study with insights on the issues and patterns of victimization. These issues lead to inquiries regarding relationships of the parties, the vulnerabilities of the victim, and the attacker’s affect upon the victim and the other individuals that surrounded said victim. Understanding the relationships, the victim, the attacker, and the crime open up theories to patterns developed from such victimization. Moving through this process in preparing, equipping, and training for said crimes enhances
The bystander effect was first studied by two social psychologists Bibb Latané and John Darley. This all started after the incident of the infamous murdering of Kitty Genovese in Kew Gardens New York. Kitty Genovese had just parked her car and started walking towards her apartment when she was attacked by her murderer and repeatedly stabbed three times over a half an hour period of time. As she was screaming for help while being stabbed to death, there were a total of 38 bystanders who heard her screams and some were even watching the event go on from their window and not a single one of these bystanders bothered help her or even call the police until it was too late and she was killed.
Fischer & Greitemeyer (2013) studied the how the positive bystander effect was impacted in a field study. There had been a substantial amount of laboratory studies done on the subject, and field studies were lacking. They observed individuals at a subway station in a Germanic city. This field experiment was used to find the interaction of a passive bystander in a set situation of bike theft with no victim on site.
Victimology is the scientific study of the physical, emotional, and financial harm people suffer from illegal activities. A common struggle Victimologists face is determining who the victim is. In general, crimes don 't have an “ideal victim”. The term ideal victims refer to someone who receives the most sympathy from society (Christie, 2016). An example of this would be a hardworking, honest man who on his way to work, had his wallet taken by force. Most people in society would have sympathy for him. He spent his life making an honest living to earn what he has and was a victim of a robbery. Victimologists study the interactions victims have with criminals, society, and the criminal justice system (Karmen, 2015). According to (Karmen, 2015)
In police-invoked law enforcement police initiate action against crimes that usually do not have victims (Wilson, 1968).
Sexual assault and rape are a serious epidemic in today’s society; statistics show that one in five women will be the victim of rape or attempted rape in their lives. (United Nations Development Fund for Women, 2008). And the reporting of sexual assault to the police is exceptionally low and few offenders are successfully prosecuted this leads to a lack of support and education within the community. (Madeleine van der Bruggen,
Kaukinen, C. (2002). The Help-Seeking Decisions of Violent Crime Victims An Examination of the Direct and Conditional Effects of Gender and the Victim-Offender Relationship. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 17(4), 432-456.
Generally, the study of crime mainly focused on the offender until quite recently. In fact, Shapland et al (1985) described the victim as ‘the forgotten man’ of the criminal justice system and ‘the non-person in the eyes of the professional participants’. A new perspective was brought with victimology, an expanding sub-discipline of crimin...
On March 13, 1964 a woman by the name of Catherine “Kitty” Genovese was coming back to her apartment in Queens, New York at 3:00 a.m. when she was impaled to death by a serial killer. According to the news, the said attack was about 30 minutes long. During the attack, Kitty Genovese screamed for help numerous times. The killer left the scene when the attention of a neighbor was attracted. Ten minutes later, the killer returned to the scene and murdered Genovese. It came to attention that 38 people witnessed the attack and murder, but all thirty-eight failed to report it until after the murder. This ordeal got the attention of many people including scientists and psychologists who wanted to figure out why this occurred. Later, the events that were published by the news were found to be false. It seemed as if the news was experiencing the bystander effect as well, because their information did not contribute to the actual facts. There were not 38 witnesses to the crime, but several had heard the screams and a few calls were made to the police during the attack. But there was still talk about something that affected the minds of people during emergency situations. This phenomenon has become known as the Bystander Effect. There were several cases that are fairly similar to the Genovese one. As well as the Genovese case, these occurrences attracted the attention of many scientists and even the news had something to say about “apathy.” Is the bystander effect real? My hypothesis is that the bystander effect is in fact, a real everyday occurrence that limits the help offered by people. This is due to the number of bystander present during a given situation. The Bystander Effect is the social psychological idea that refers to cases in whi...
On December 3, in full view of a number of witnesses standing within close proximity, Ki-Suck Han, a 58 year-old male entered into an altercation with Naeem Davis, a 30 year-old homeless male at the Times Square subway station. Han was pushed down into the tracks and then struggled and pleaded for help for what was reported to be a full 22 seconds, as witnesses watched, took pictures, and failed to come to his assistance (Petrecca & Eversley, 2012). The man was then hit by the approaching subway train as it dragged into the station. This is a sad example of the Bystander Effect which demonstrates that people are less likely to come to the assistance of another in an emergency situation when other bystanders are present and also perceived to be responsible and able to help (Schneider, Gruman, and Coutts, 2012). Moreover, we are most of the time influenced by Social Loafing. Social loafing is the diffusion of responsibility among a group of people. When a group of people are perceiving an emergency situation, all of them tend to think that others are available to help. Social influence explains that people always look to others to evaluate a situation as a real emergency. We assume that others may know something that we do not know and we measure their reactions before we decide how we will respond. If we noticed that those around us are acting as if it is an emergency, then we will view the situation in the same way and act accordingly. However, if those around us are acting calm, then we may not realize the immediacy of the situation and therefore fail to respond appropriately. Maybe this is the answer to why people did not help the homeless who was attacked by the 58 year- old man. They failed to see the situation as a real emergency, and as a result they did not act
Fear of their assaulter alone can affect if they decide to report a sexual assault omitted towards them. According to Adegoke O. Adefolalu, "The extent of this crime [sexual assaults] is grossly underestimated partly due to non-disclosure, which in turn is often attributed to the fear of not being protected adequately after reporting the incidents of sexual violence as the victims fear possible reprisal from their attackers." She mentions how the victims choose to keep quiet about the incident, since they fear their attacker will harm them for reporting the incident. Adefolalu mentions, "Victims who feared reprisal attacks from perpetrator were five times more likely to delay presentation than those who were not." My hypothesis is fear of their assaulter prevents an individual from reporting a sexual assault committed towards them. My null hypothesis is fear does not affect if an individual reports a sexual assault. My independent variable is fear of their assaulter and my dependent variable is unreported sexual assaults. According to U.S. Department of Justice, "when crimes are not reported to the police, victims may not be able to obtain necessary services to cope with the victimization, and offenders may go unpunished." The U.S. Department of Justice Office states a valid point, in order for victims to obtain the necessary services need, they have to disclose of the incident and seek
Karmen, A. (2016). Crime victims: an introduction to victimology (9th Ed.). Boston, MA: Cengage Learning. Retrieved March 27, 2018, from https://www.betheluniversityonline.net/cps/default.aspx?SectionID=6855&tabid=154#1