Almost Half of Russian Victims of Crime Don’t Report This to Police, St. Petersburg’s Institute of Law Enforcement Problems Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 29 – Between 2020 and 2024, 13 percent of Russians were victims of fraud, assault, theft, robbery or violent robbery, but only 55 percent of them reported these incidents to police and 10 percent did not tell anyone about what happened, according to St. Petersburg’s Institute of Law Enforcement Problems.

            What this means, the Institute says on the  basis of surveys conducted since 2018 is that “the police remain unaware of a vast number of crimes” and that the information they do have is systematically distorted as some crimes are far more likely to be reported than others (tochno.st/materials/skolko-liudei-stanoviatsia-zertvami-prestuplenii-i-kakaia-cast-prestupnosti-ne-ucityvaetsia-v-oficialnoi-statistike).

            These surveys have found that different age groups report even violent crimes at different rates. Among victims of assault over 65, 91 percent of women and 76 percent of men turn to the police, but among the 18 to 24 cohort, these figures are only at 43 percent for women and 26 percent for men.

            Online crime, so-called “victimless” crimes like drug possession, and family violence are less likely to be reported, the surveys found, with police completely unaware of at least 60 percent of online crimes involving fraud and financial loss, the Institute says. Far more Russians are thus victims of crime than the police know or act on or that official statistics report.