The willingness to report crimes within the context of a victim’s psychological circumstances

Abstract

The authors rely on Tadeusz Tomaszewski’s theory of psychological circumstance. The theory distinguishes between normal and difficult circumstances. A person’s par-ticular circumstances (for example a crime victim’s circumstances) may be analyzed objectively and subjectively. The first of these assumes that elements of the situation are described from the outside (independently on the entity’s psychological features and his or her experience). The second demands finding the situation from the entity’s per-spective. Law enforcement personnel should be able to determine a victim’s subjective psychological circumstances and be able to adjust it to the situation. It allows to reduce a victim’s resistance against crime reporting and allows the reduction of the impact of vic-timization and secondary victimization. This approach requires adequately trained stuff.