Victim Crisis Intervention - An Evaluation Proposal (From Evaluating Victim Services, P 98-112, 1981, Susan E Salasin, ed. - See NCJ-85715)

• NCJ Number: 85720
• Author(s): J H Stein
• Date Published: 1981
• Length: 15 pages
• Sale Source: Sage Publications, Inc
• Publication Type: Program/Project Evaluation
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This paper argues for evaluators of victim assistance programs to examine their effectiveness and document the need for further programs and policy reforms with respect to victims.

Abstract

The traumatic implications of the fear of crime among the elderly are particularly poignant, and some programs have attempted to ease the emotional suffering through both crime prevention and psychological and social forms of assistance. The elderly, however, are but a small segment of the total victimized population, and most succcessful programs have incorporated services for victims of all ages. Those who have a cooperative relationship with the police and who make it possible to offer crisis counseling soon after the criminal event appear to be extraordinarily helpful to their clients. Such victim crisis intervention programs, however, are still rare. There would be more of them if better evaluation had been done to document the need for these services and their effectiveness in achieving client satisfaction. Only one such study exists to date; its findings indicate that the crisis potential in crime victims is high and that the patterns of emotional reactions to crime can be ameliorated through the benign intervention of inexpensive, trained paraprofessionals. Among the barriers to more widespread program implementation are public reluctance to admit suffering, to believe the crime threat, to spread limited resources, and to trust government agency performance. The dominant reason, however, is the lack of hard evidence to support the case for crisis intervention. To this end, an evaluation design is outlined. The hypotheses to be tested would be that victims receiving crisis intervention resolve their traumatic experience more quickly and that such programs reduce occupational stress and increasing job satisfaction among police officers. This quasi-experimental model has the potential for changing the terrifying victimization experience. Notes and 18 references are given.