Untitled

Abstract

ABSTRACT. The tremendous growth in victim-oriented laws granting various rights to crime victims, which emerged worldwide during the last two decades, has initiated a renewed research interest in the varied aspects of the 'needy victims' concept. Highly sophisticated theoretical models, indicating various risk factors (e.g. external control, upward relative risk assessments) and protection factors (hardiness, behaviour attributions), were developed to explain which crime victims are in need of victim support. The practical validity of these models is relatively low: at the police level there are simply no resources to conduct lengthy diagnostic interviews with crime victims. This article aims to bridge the gap between sophistication and mundane selection of needy victims. The focus is on a simple selection instrument, namely the victim's psychological condition prior to the victimization. Analyses suggest that low pre-victimization well-being constitutes a central risk factor, predicting a delayed deterioration in post-victimization well-being, and longer term psychological distress, which is manifest ten months after the victimizing incident. The 'traffic light' model is discussed as a simple selection tool, which might be used during the 'witness' interview. Such a model may also be used by defense attorneys to examine if clients were appropriately assessed as needing support after describing their experiences to the police. For the prosecutor's office the 'traffic light' model offers an instrument to predict which victims might benefit from a personal interview with the prosecutor. Some implications of low well-being for studies on repeat victimizations are discussed, inter alia in terms of a potential mood congruence bias, that might result in inflated estimates of multiple victimizations.Worldwide there is an enormous gap between the total number of crime victims and those who receive official victim support. For example, in the Netherlands millions of people are victimized each year. The Netherlands Victim Support, however, is only engaged in 130,000 contacts with victims of crime and of traffic accidents annually. However, this does not necessarily indicate a problem. Not all victims are in need of support, and victim services should only be supplied to "needy victims" (Winkel, 1991a).