Desiré De Luca (University of Calabria)
Patrizia Ordine and Giuseppe Rose
This paper investigates how the physical environment of law enforcement facilities affects victims willingness to report sexual violence. We evaluate a nationwide Italian intervention: the creation of "listening rooms" (stanze di ascolto)dedicated, victim centered spaces designed to provide privacy and psychological safety within police stations. Using a staggered Difference-in-Differences framework across 106 provinces (20162023), we find that the introduction of these rooms leads to a statistically sig nificant increase in reported sexual crimes, with an average effect of 0.17 standard deviations. The impact is primarily driven by the initial introduction of the service, suggesting an extensive-margin mechanism where the availability of a protected en vironment facilitates the decision to report. Falsification tests on alternative crime categories and stable trends in Anti-Violence Center admissions confirm that the find ings reflect the emergence of previously latent victimization rather than an increase in the underlying prevalence of violence. Our results demonstrate that specialized, victim-centered infrastructure can significantly bridge the reporting gap by fostering a secure and supportive environment for victims to come forward.