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Implications Ultimately, various factors contribute to the underreporting of juvenile victimizations. Adolescents, developmentally concerned with personal autonomy, may resist the involvement of adults in their affairs, even when they involve crime victimization. This could be in part related to fears that youth will be blamed for participating in or for instigating their victimization. Certainly, the fact that juvenile victims often need the intercession of parents or other adults to make reports to police could also put a damper on reporting, not only because youth may be reluctant to involve parents, but also because it adds one more stage at which the process may be interrupted. Parents, for their part, may fear the negative effects on juveniles of involvement with police and other authorities, including the chance it might lead to reprisals by offenders. Juveniles and their parents may both be concerned that police and other authorities will not take juvenile victims seriously. Finally, there is a cultural predisposition, shared by parents, youth, and police, to view nonsexual assaults against juveniles as something other than crimes—rather as fights, scuffles, or child maltreatment—and therefore not suitable for police reporting. Patterns in the data provide some perspective on the factors that influence the percentage of juveniles who report certain crimes. The crime of sexual assault against juveniles, in contrast to other violent crime, is reported to the police at about the same rate as for adults. This may be because sexual assault against juveniles is seen as comparatively more criminal or because victims and their families want to access services and information that either require or facilitate reporting. This suggests that reporting of other crimes might be increased if victims and families were encouraged to take them seriously, believed the authorities would also take them seriously, and realized some tangible benefit from reporting. The finding that small-value thefts from juveniles have a comparatively high rate of reports to school authorities suggests, moreover, that the seriousness of the crime is not the sole factor determining the level of reporting. Even minor crimes may have high reporting levels in some contexts. In this case, school authorities may hear about small value thefts because they are perceived as interested and concerned or they are viewed as having the ability to recover the stolen item or bring the perpetrator to justice. Justice systems that are easy to access and respond well to juvenile concerns may elicit more reports. Based on these patterns, police should consider taking the following steps to encourage juvenile reporting:
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