NCJ Number
181005
Journal
International Criminal Justice Review Volume: 9 Dated: 1999 Pages: 18-38
Date Published
1999
Length
21 pages
Annotation
In presenting the findings of a comparative survey of burglary victims in five cities in Poland, Hungary, and England, this article focuses on burglary victims' needs and the availability of victim services to meet those needs.
Abstract
The questionnaire used in the survey contained 100 questions that focused on victims' experiences of the crime, their perceptions about the police, the help that they received from formal and informal sources, security measures they had taken, and their concerns about future crime in the context of their feelings about the area in which they lived. There were 200 victim interviews in each city. Although the nature of household burglaries was found to vary in the three countries, victims' reactions to burglary in Poland and Hungary largely conformed to the pattern found in Anglo-American research; however, there were some indications that Polish burglary victims in particular were more severely affected by their victimization. Service availability was also considered in some detail, with the English experience of Victim Support as a well-established agency responding to the needs of victims in general and burglary victims in particular contrasted with less well established developments in Poland and Hungary. In the latter two countries, victim needs far outstripped service provision. 6 tables and 45 references