Don't help victims of crime if you don't have the time: Assessing support for Good Samaritan laws ☆ Victoria Time a, ⁎, Brian K. Payne b , Randy R. Gainey a a Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA 23529, United States b Department of Criminal Justice, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA 30302, United States abstract Criminologists tend to study crimes that include active behaviors by offenders. Much less attention is given to inaction – or crimes that are defined by the absence of behaviors. A number of different crimes of omission, however, are included within state statutes. In recent times, a great deal of legislative attention has been directed towards whether Good Samaritan laws should be developed- laws that require bystanders to help those who are imperiled. This article describes a pilot study involving a survey of 134 “bystanders” to determine their attitudes about helping and their support for laws mandating that bystanders help crime victims. Results show that the sample overwhelmingly indicated that they would help others themselves, but there was mixed support for laws requiring that individuals help those in need. Support for Bad Samaritan laws was related to age and education. Implications are provided. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Introduction Some current legal discourse has focused on whether crimes of omission should be expanded to include the failure to help crime victims. On the one hand, from a moral perspective, one could argue that failing to help crime victims is not much different from failing to report elder abuse or child abuse. On the other hand, from a social constructionist and labeling perspective, one must question whether failing to help strangers meets a level of egregiousness that would warrant the behavior being defined as illegal. To determine whether failing to help meets these standards, one must determine how the public perceives the failure to act. This research examines people's attitudes towards the duty to assist imperiled strangers. Determining whether support exists for these laws will provide interesting cultural insight and an indication of whether policy makers should promote these laws as a strategy to respond to public will. Review of literature Recent media stories of persons whose lives could have been saved had passersby acted (for example, the beating of a man who eventually died in broad day light in front of a store in Washington, D.C.; a hit and run victim left on the street in Philadelphia) have sparked discussions relating to the duty to summon help for, or provide help to imperiled strangers. Generally, failures to assist persons in distress are not criminal omissions even when helping another poses no danger or inconve- nience to a person. When there is a law that mandates people to report an activity (as for example, child abuse), incident (car accident, for example), or something (register a firearm), or when a law imposes a duty to intervene in order to prevent death or injury, failure to comply may carry with it criminal liability (Klotter, 2004; Reid, 2007; Samaha, 2008). Given that most states apply the “American bystander rule” (Lippman, 2007; Samaha, 2008), strangers are left to die or to wallow in pain on road sides when placing a simple 911 call may have saved a life. Why some people go to great lengths to help even when they are not obligated to, and why others look away is intriguing, and perhaps can only be explained as a moral issue. Unfortunately, as morally reprehensible as the omission to provide help to a distressed person may be, moral lapses carry with them no legal condemnations. To date, much of the literature on omissions/failure to help have taken the form of legal and case critiques and analysis (Denton, 1991; Leavens, 1988; Murphy, 2001; Woozley, 1983), while others have been based on philosophical analysis of the subject (see McGrath, 2005; McIntyre, 1994; Smith, 2001). While some (see McIntyre, 1994; Murphy, 2001; Woozley, 1983) have argued for the legitimacy of statutes that impose a duty to help even if to a limited extent, Denton (1991) argues against a legal obligation to help imperiled strangers. The threshold of the argument in support of legislation that imposes a duty to help rests on the premise that it is the government's responsibility to cater for the general welfare of the people (see McIntyre, 1994). The antithesis of this premise suggests that legislation that mandates people to exercise duties that are otherwise moral options is just another way by which government exerts “coercive powers” (see Denton, 1991). As Samaha (2008, p. 91) explained, the rationale for imposing legal Journal of Criminal Justice 38 (2010) 790–795 ☆ This paper was accepted under the Editorship of Kent Joscelyn. ⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 757 683 6100. E-mail address: vtime@odu.edu (V. Time). 0047-2352/$ – see front matter. Published by Elsevier Ltd. doi:10.1016/j.jcrimjus.2010.05.006 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Criminal Justice