Experiencing sexual violence may have serious long-term consequences for victims. Seeking help may decrease the chances of developing long-term physical and psychosocial problems. Still not every ...victim seeks help, and especially with victimization of sexual violence, there may be several reasons as to why. The barriers to help-seeking are diverse and may depend on several contextual factors. This study, as part of a larger research project, aimed to determine the barriers that victims of sexual violence experience in their decision to seek help in a non-college setting. This mixed-methods study included an online survey (N = 133) and open-ended survey (N = 207) amongst victims of 18 years and older. The online survey data were analyzed using chi-square tests for independence and t-tests; the open-ended survey data were analyzed using a descriptive approach. The online survey data showed that minimization of the incident was higher for non-help-seekers, whilst distrust toward support providers and issues with the accessibility of help were higher for help-seekers. No further significant associations were found between the decision to seek help and the barriers to help-seeking. From the open-ended survey data, three categories of barriers were distinguished: (a) individual barriers, such as feelings of shame, (b) interpersonal barriers, such as the fear of negative social reactions and (c) sociocultural barriers, such as societal stereotypes regarding sexual violence. The findings suggest that victims experience various, but primarily individual, barriers to help-seeking and that these barriers do not strongly differ between help-seekers and non-help-seekers. This study highlights the importance of addressing barriers to help-seeking on an organizational and societal level to encourage help-seeking.
As intimate partner violence (IPV) often remains unknown to police, bystanders can play a crucial role in prevention and further escalation of IPV. However, little is known about what brings them ...into action by reporting incidents of IPV to authorities. As such, we use statements of bystanders who filed reports about IPV incidents to an official domestic violence agency in the Netherlands (N = 78), to investigate the reasoning and motivations for reporting their suspicions. Results show that the reasons for bystanders to report IPV differ depending on the relational dynamics between partners. In situations perceived as intimate terrorism, involving a hierarchical abusive relationship between a man offender and a woman victim, bystanders primarily reported when previous helping initiatives proved inefficient, and they did so to prevent further harm, often particularly in relation to the woman victim. In situations perceived as situational couple violence, involving a symmetrical abusive relationship, bystanders primarily reported when escalation appeared, and they did so to prevent further harm to involved children. We conclude that bystanders report IPV incidents when the need for help is clear, and their motivation for acting concerns the well-being of victims. Our findings add to the growing body of evidence about real-life bystander intervention in emergencies and highlight the need for understanding intervention as context-specific in order to design effective intervention initiatives.
Objectives:
We examined the extent to which different aspects of parenting are able to moderate the association between spending time unstructured socializing (US) in urban areas with high disorder ...and adolescent delinquency.
Methods:
We used detailed data on time use, disorder in neighborhoods, parenting, and delinquency among 603 adolescents (aged 11–17 at T1) from the study of peers, activities, and neighborhoods, a two-wave longitudinal study with an interval of two years between measurements. Longitudinal multilevel analyses were used to examine interactions effects between parenting aspects and mean differences as well as individual changes in time spent unstructured socializing in areas with high disorder.
Results:
We did not find between-person level interaction effects between parenting and time spent in criminogenic settings. Our cross-level analyses, however, indicated that levels of parental monitoring as well as the quality of the parent–adolescent relationship mitigated the effects of changes in time spent in criminogenic settings.
Conclusions:
Whether increases in time spent in criminogenic settings are related to increases in delinquency seems to be conditional on the level of parental monitoring and the quality of the parent–adolescent relationship. If these aspects of parenting are sufficient, changes in time spent in criminogenic settings are not necessarily detrimental.
Procedural Justice, Anger, and Prisoners’ Misconduct Beijersbergen, Karin A.; Dirkzwager, Anja J. E.; Eichelsheim, Veroni I. ...
Criminal justice and behavior,
02/2015, Letnik:
42, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Procedural justice literature suggests that when criminal justice authorities treat people with fairness and respect, people will be more likely to comply with authority’s decisions and rules. Up ...until now, prior research has largely neglected the correctional context and often used cross-sectional designs. The aims of this study were to examine (a) the longitudinal relationship between prisoners’ procedural justice perceptions and their misconduct, and (b) the mediating role of anger in this relationship. Using two waves of survey data (T1 and T2) and disciplinary reports from a sample of 806 Dutch prisoners, structural equation models were employed to investigate associations. The results show that prisoners who felt treated in a procedurally just manner in the correctional facility at T1 were less likely to report engaging in misconduct at T2. They were also less likely to have received a disciplinary report at T2. Anger fully mediated the effect of procedural justice on prisoners’ misconduct.
A meta‐analysis of k = 53 studies containing 60 non‐overlapping samples and 10,073 participants was conducted to investigate whether psychopathy was associated with delinquency and (violent) ...recidivism in juveniles. The results showed that psychopathy was moderately associated with delinquency, general recidivism, and violent recidivism. Moderator effects revealed that various study and participant characteristics influenced the strength of the association between psychopathy, delinquency, and (violent) recidivism. It was concluded that screening for the (early) detection of psychopathy is important, as delinquent behavior and recidivism can be predicted from psychopathy as early as the transition from middle childhood to adolescence.
The family social relations model (SRM) is applied to identify the sources of variance in interpersonal dispositions in families, but the antecedents or consequences of those sources are rarely ...investigated. Simultaneous modeling of the SRM with antecedents or consequences using structural equation modeling (SEM) allows to do so, but may become computationally prohibitive in small samples. We therefore consider two factor score regression (FSR) methods: regression and Bartlett FSR. Based on full information maximum likelihood (FIML), we derive closed-form expressions for the regression and Bartlett factor scores in the presence of missingness. A simulation study in both a complete- and incomplete-case setting compares the performance of these FSR methods with SEM and an ANOVA-based approach. In both settings, the regression FIML factor scores as explanatory variable produces unbiased estimators with precision comparable to the SEM-estimators. When SRM-effects are used as dependent variables, none of the FSR methods are a suitable alternative for SEM. The latter result deviates from previous studies on FSR in more simple settings. As an example, we explore whether gender and past victimhood of relational and physical aggression are antecedents for family dynamics of perceived support, and whether those dynamics predict physical and relational aggression.
As existing literature on intergenerational continuity of criminal behavior is mainly based on data on ‘general’ offenders and their children, the current study aims to improve our knowledge by ...looking at intergenerational continuity of crime among a national sample of children of organized crime offenders. Judicial data on all (
N
= 478) offenders convicted of organized crime in the Netherlands (in the period 2008 - 2014) and their children were used to study offspring’s involvement in crime. In addition, a comparison group was selected from the entire population in the Netherlands to examine the relative risk of offending. Results show that almost half of the children of organized crime offenders have a criminal record. Sons are significantly more at risk of offending and this risk also increases strongly by age. Furthermore, the results show the strongest intergenerational relation for violent crimes. Gender of the convicted parent and timing of parental crime also seem to play a role in the continuity. With regard to the relative risk of offending, the results show that children of convicted organized crime offenders are three times more at risk of offending compared to children in the comparison group, even after controlling for the number of parental crimes. In sum, there is a substantial risk of intergenerational continuity of criminal behavior among children of organized crime offenders. Future research would benefit from focusing on how criminal behavior in these specific families is transmitted to future generations.
Although spending time in criminogenic settings is increasingly recognized as an explanation for adolescent delinquency, little is known about its determinants. The current study aims to examine the ...extent to which (change in) self-control and (change in) delinquent attitudes relate to (change in) time spent in criminogenic settings, and the extent to which they mediate the effects of (change in) parenting. Time spent in criminogenic settings was measured comprehensively, by including social and physical characteristics of micro settings (200 × 200 meters). Multilevel structural equation models on two waves of panel data on 603 adolescents (aged 12-19) showed that self-control and delinquent attitudes contributed to between-person differences in time spent in criminogenic settings. Within-person increases in time spent in such settings were predicted by increased delinquent attitudes. For indirect effects, self-control partially mediated between-person effects of parenting, whereas delinquent attitudes partially mediated both between- and within-person effects.
This meta-analysis investigated the long term effects of prevention programs conducted during early and middle childhood on criminal offending during adulthood. The analyses included 3611 ...participants in 9 programs. The effect size for adult criminal offending was significant, but small in magnitude (
OR
=
1.26;
95% CI
=
1.06–1.50,
p
=
.011). The effects of the programs on positive outcomes (academic attainment and involvement in productive activity, such as being engaged in school or work) were somewhat larger and more consistent than effects on crime (
OR
=
1.36,
95% CI
=
1.20–1.55,
p
<
.001). Several participant and program characteristics moderated the effectiveness of (early) prevention. Children who were more at-risk and those from a lower SES benefited more. Shorter, but more intensive programs, and programs that focus on social and behavioral skills, rather than on academic skills or family support, tend to produce larger effects. Taken together, these results indicate that early prevention programs can help put children on a more positive developmental trajectory that is maintained into adulthood, but there is still no convincing evidence that they can prevent adult crime. Implications of the findings for research, policy and clinical practice are discussed.
► Early prevention programs have only modest effect on crime in adulthood. ► Effects on positive outcomes are larger and more consistent than effects on crime. ► Children who were more at-risk and those from a lower SES benefit more. ► Shorter, intensive programs with focus on behavioral skills produce larger effects.
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