Abstract
It is well-established that victims of crime have numerous preferences when encountering the criminal justice system. Often, research examines these preferences in terms of procedural justice, asserting that elements such as voice, respect, and fair treatment may lead to greater satisfaction and more positive experiences. Positive experiences also entail preventing secondary victimization by the legal system. Much of the research surrounding this topic, however, discusses victims of crime as a single entity. The current research examines if differences among crime victims, namely whether they suffered sexual or non-sexual victimizations, influence their legal preferences. Victims of sexual assault have undergone particularly traumatic and stigmatizing experiences that may warrant a greater need for expression and understanding of their harm. It is hypothesized that for victims of sexual assault, there will be a stronger association between procedural justice and negative psychological effects of criminal proceedings. Therefore, type of offense is examined as a moderator variable of this relationship. Hierarchical regression analysis indicated that there is in fact an interaction effect for procedural justice and psychological effects, suggesting that these preferences are more desired by victims of sexual assault.
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Notes
Though procedural justice research defines accuracy more generally (e.g., basing decisions on all relevant information), the focus here was on the police investigation. Most victims will have had experience with this phase of the process, while many will not attend court (especially in the Netherlands) or inspect the legal file.
The data was checked for suitability for factor analysis. Bartlett’s test of Sphericity was significant (p < .001) and the Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin measure was .74 (.6 is the recommended minimum value, see Kaiser, 1970).
Separate analyses were also conducted examining the three dimensions of procedural justice noted above—voice, accuracy, and respect (results not shown). Findings were similar to the aggregated measure of procedural justice, where there was a significant interaction effect of voice and accuracy, indicating a similar pattern between sexual and non-sexual victims. Though the interaction effect of respect was not significant, the p value was marginal. Furthermore, an analysis was conducted using a separate dependent variable, the extent to which the process recognized the victim’s harm, in order to demonstrate a similar pattern for this variable. As noted earlier, victims of sexual assault are likely to require recognition for their suffering. Recognition was not the focus of the study because of issues with its reliability as a measure, and the desire to focus on psychological consequences of legal proceedings. The hierarchical regression analysis, using the same variables as the present analysis, indicated that though the interaction term of recognition by offense type is not significant, it does approach marginal significance (p = .058).
This was carried out following the Aiken and West (1991) procedure, where two separate regression analyses are run with one group being assigned 0 in the first analysis and the other group being assigned 0 in the second analysis. Subsequently, new interaction terms were also computed using the new conditional moderator groups.
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Acknowledgments
The author would like to express her gratitude to the Dutch Compensation Fund for Victims of Serious Crimes (Schadefonds geweldsmisdrijven) and the numerous victim support agencies throughout Australia for their assistance.
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The author declares that she has no conflict of interest.
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The data collection complies with the current laws of the country in which they were performed.
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Laxminarayan, M. Procedural Justice and Psychological Effects of Criminal Proceedings: The Moderating Effect of Offense Type. Soc Just Res 25, 390–405 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11211-012-0167-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11211-012-0167-6