NCJ Number
104882
Journal
Criminal Justice and Behavior Volume: 14 Issue: 1 Dated: (March 1987) Pages: 81-92
Date Published
1987
Length
12 pages
Annotation
A total of 150 recent victims of physical assault were interviewed about their interactions with police officers and were assessed at approximately 1 month and 6 months postattack on three measures of psychological distress.
Abstract
Victims of all three crime types -- rape, domestic assault, and nondomestic assault -- were found to exhibit similar patterns of response to victimization, including significant declines in symptomatology on two of the three measures across the 6-month period. While some police actions were approximately equally distributed across crime types, nondomestic assault victims were significantly less likely to receive information on available intervention resources than victims of the other two types of crime. Furthermore, a strong relationship was found between nature of services received and police mention of service availability, suggesting the importance of the police officer in the information dissemination process. (Publisher abstract)