Citation

Wirtz PW, Harrell AV. Crim. Justice Behav. 1987; 14(1): 81-92.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1987, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/0093854887014001007

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

A total of 150 recent victims of physical assault were interviewed about their interactions with police officers and were assessed at approximately one month and six months postattack on three measures of psychological distress. 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 six-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.

Language: en