Crime victims often need assistance navigating the unfamiliar legal system. Limited research exists, however, on those tasked with helping victims, the victim assistance units (VAUs), particularly ...outside the US. Indeed, there have been calls in the literature for more comparative research in this area. Responding to their call, this exploratory study analyzes the creation of VAUs within the district attorney's offices (DAO) in Israel following specific victims' rights legislation. Using qualitative interviews with representatives from three quarters of the VAUs in Israel (N = 6), the paper explores the formation of two models of VAUs, examines the specific location of the VAU within the DAOs, and analyzes various influences on the work of the VAU. I argue that limited resources, cultural organization and professional ethos prevent VAUs from fully addressing victims' needs. In order to best respond to victims' needs, the VAUs should expand their contact with victims and receive sufficient resources to do so. The Israeli case study demonstrates that to best assist victims, VAUs should be created with a "victim-centered" agenda. This study advances our knowledge of victim workers outside the US, highlighting the impact of their DAO's affiliation and its potential impact on victims.
Theories of human aggression can inform research, policy, and practice in organizations. One such theory, victim precipitation, originated in the field of criminology. According to this perspective, ...some victims invite abuse through their personalities, styles of speech or dress, actions, and even their inactions. That is, they are partly at fault for the wrongdoing of others. This notion is gaining purchase in industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology as an explanation for workplace mistreatment. The first half of our article provides an overview and critique of the victim precipitation hypothesis. After tracing its history, we review the flaws of victim precipitation as catalogued by scientists and practitioners over several decades. We also consider real-world implications of victim precipitation thinking, such as the exoneration of violent criminals. Confident that I-O can do better, the second half of this article highlights alternative frameworks for researching and redressing hostile work behavior. In addition, we discuss a broad analytic paradigm—perpetrator predation—as a way to understand workplace abuse without blaming the abused. We take the position that these alternative perspectives offer stronger, more practical, and more progressive explanations for workplace mistreatment. Victim precipitation, we conclude, is an archaic ideology. Criminologists have long since abandoned it, and so should we.
The phenomenon of bullying has received a great deal of international attention in the last few decades. In this article, we provide a critical review of some of the major contributions from the ...field of educational research. We first provide an overall description of the classic concept of bullying, including certain characteristics of bullies and victims that have received particular attention, and then describe what we consider to be the principal limitations of these predominant academic and professional discourses. These include the following three concerns: (1) the restrictive definition employed, (2) a pathologizing bully-victim dichotomy, and (3) a gender-blind or at best genderessentialist approach to gender difference. Finally, we propose a conceptual shift toward a more comprehensive understanding that is based, in part, on constructivist and poststructuralist perspectives on gender.
Despite the importance of intimate partner violence (IPV) and homicide research to women’s health and safety, much remains unknown about risk factors for intimate partner homicide (IPH). This article ...presents the Arizona Intimate Partner Homicide Study, pilot research that is being conducted in one U.S. state to update and expand on risk factors for IPH. In the context of presenting this study, we summarize the literature on data collection techniques, various marginalized and under researched populations, and the importance of gathering data about the victim-offender relationship and situational IPH risk factors. Additional research is needed to update risk factors for IPH to account for changes in technology and to examine differential risk across diverse populations. Local, community based data collection strategies are likely to provide more comprehensive and nuanced insight into IPH; though, to understand risk factors among marginalized populations, it may be necessary to increase sample size through a national strategy. Although not a panacea, we present this ongoing research as a model for other states to emulate and improve upon, in the hopes of developing more comprehensive data examining risk for IPH among victims of IPV.
Rape myths are false beliefs about sexual violence that encourage blaming the victim and exonerating the offender. Within the framework of the Ambivalent Sexism Theory, we tested a model ...investigating the effect of each dimension of ambivalent sexism on the endorsement of each rape myth, and in turn the effect of each myth on the attribution of responsibility (to the perpetrator vs. to the victim) in case of sexual violence. Participants were 264 students (54.9% females). Results showed that hostile sexism toward women fostered the endorsement of each myth, whereas benevolence toward men enhanced the myth ‘He didn’t mean to’ and this increased the perception of the victim’s responsibility. Implications in developing interventions to de-construct rape myths are discussed.
Objectives
To examine the impact of face-to-face restorative justice conference (RJC) meetings led by police officers between crime victims and their offenders on victims’ post-traumatic stress ...symptoms.
Methods
Two trials conducted in London randomly assigned burglary or robbery cases with consenting victims and offenders to either a face-to-face restorative justice conference (RJC) in addition to conventional justice treatment or conventional treatment without a RJC. Post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) were measured with the Impact of Event Scale-Revised (IES-R) within 1 month of treatment for 192 victims. We assessed the prevalence and severity of PTSS scores following treatment, using independent sample
t
tests and chi square statistics. We further measured the magnitude of the differences between the groups, using effect size analyses.
Results
Analyses show that PTSS scores are significantly lower among victims assigned to RJC in addition to criminal justice processing through the courts than to customary criminal justice processing alone. There are overall 49 % fewer victims with clinical levels of PTSS, and possible PTSD (IES-R ≥ 25). Main treatment effects are significant (
t
= 2.069;
p
< .05).
Conclusions
Findings suggest that restorative justice conferences reduce clinical levels of PTSS and possibly PTSD in a short-term follow-up assessment. Future research should include longer follow-up, larger and more stratified samples, and financial data to account for the cost benefit implications of RJ conferences compared to ordinary PTSS treatments.
Sex workers as a group are one of the more common targets in serial homicide, yet the most likely to go unsolved. Part of the reason for this is the difficulty in linking individual crime scenes to a ...series, especially in those series where offenders not only target sex worker victims but also target non-sex worker victims. Inconsistencies in both victim targeting and behaviors engaged in across series add to the difficulties of linking and solvability in these types of crimes. The current study aimed to add to the current body of literature on serial crime linkage by examining not only the most salient behavioral indicators useful for crime scene classification of serial homicides that involve sex worker victims but also examine the trajectories of behavioral change that can help link apparently inconsistent crime scenes and proposes the new Model for the Analysis of Trajectories and Consistency in Homicide (MATCH). The study examines 83 homicide series, including 44 (53%) series where all victims were sex workers and 39 (47%) series that included a mix of sex workers and non-sex worker victims. Using the MATCH system allowed for the majority of series to be classified to a dominant trajectory pattern, over half as many as a traditional consistency analysis that focusses on behavioral similarity matching. Results further showed that Sex Worker Victim series were almost three times more consistent across their series than Mixed-Victim series, not only in victim selection but also in the overall behavioral patterns. Findings are discussed in line with theoretical and psychological issues relating to understanding the nature of behavioral consistency and the importance of going beyond simple matching toward a model that allows for the identification of consistency in seemingly inconsistent series, as well as investigative implications relating to linking serial crimes.
There has been limited examination of the phenomenon of the victim-offender overlap in the field of technology-facilitated abuse (TFA). To design effective strategies to prevent TFA, it is important ...to understand which individuals are most at risk of victimization, perpetration, and to what extent a subset of people both experience victimization and engage in perpetration. This study drew on Cyber-Abuse Research Initiative (CARI) data, a nationally representative U.S. sample of adults ages 18-35. TFA measurement consisted of parallel scales for victimization and perpetration, each with 27 items assessing forms of technology-facilitated surveillance, monitoring/tracking, interference/communications, reputational harm, controlling/limiting access, and fraud. A bivariate probit of TFA perpetration and TFA victimization, as separate outcomes, was fit to allow for joint estimation of regression coefficients and robust standard errors. Analyses confirmed that TFA, similar to other forms of interpersonal aggression, is characterized by a substantial victim-offender overlap, with 30 percent of the sample reporting involvement both as a victim and as a perpetrator. Internet/social media use and social isolation did not distinguish victimization and perpetration. However, positive and negative affect as well as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Queer, Asexual, or other sexual orientation (LGBQA+) were positively correlated with victimization, whereas female gender and having postsecondary education were positively associated with perpetration. These results may be used to design interventions and anticipate service needs. TFA, as a new topic of research, should capitalize on the theoretical and empirical article related to other forms of the victim-offender overlap.
Sexual victimization is typically presented as a gender-based problem involving a female victim and a male offender. Science, policy, and society focus on female victims at the expense of male ...victims. Male sexual victimization is thus understudied compared with female sexual victimization. By performing a critical interpretive synthesis of research papers, policy documents, and gray literature (N = 67) published in four electronic databases from January 2000 through September 2017, this article establishes the prevalence of male sexual victims and the causes that underlie the underrepresentation of this group in existing research and current policy. The prevalence rates of male sexual victims vary considerably, with up to 65% of men reporting sexual victimization. The underrepresentation of male victims was found to be rooted in prevailing gender roles and accepted sexual scripts in society, together with rape myths and stereotypical rape scripts. The former prescribes men as the dominant and sexually active gender. The latter denies male sexual victimization and frames women as “ideal victims.” Combined, these prevailing societal perceptions of men, male sexuality, and sexual victimization prevent men from self-identifying as victims and inhibit them from seeking help to cope with the adverse consequences of sexual victimization. Addressing the gender differences in sexual victimization requires societal and political changes that challenge prevailing stereotypical perceptions of sexual victims. Such changes could result in improved support services for male sexual victims.
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