Correctional Psychology

Victimology: A Comprehensive Approach to Forensic, Psychosocial and Legal

Perspectives By R.T. Gopalan
Introduction to Forensic and Criminal Psychology By D. Howitt
Forensic and Legal Psychology: Psychological Science Applied to Law By Mark
Costanzo & Daniel Krauss
Introduction to Forensic Psychology: Issues and Controversies to Crime and
Justice By B.A. Arrigo & S.L. Shipley
Victimization
Victimization is the act and process of making someone a victim.
Victim
In a narrower sense, it is a person whose right or good has been violated by
committing a crime or by violating international human rights norms.
In a broader sense, besides individuals, other entities are also included, such
as organizations and social groups, whose rights or goods have been violated
in the same way.

UN Declaration of Basic Principles of Justice for Victims of Crime and Abuse

of Power (Resolution No. 40/34,1985) categorizes victims as:
1. Victims of criminal acts
2. Victims of power misuse
3. Indirect victims (family members, people that helped victims, etc.)
Sexual Abuse Stages
• 1. Stereotypes: Sexual abuse originates with stereotypes that are a
collective inheritance of any society or community. These stereotypes
are intergenerational and communicated through day-to-day
conversations via various agencies of socialization.
• 2. Sexist attitude: Based on the impressions formed by the
stereotypes an individual now starts developing a sense of superiority
or inferiority. The stereotypes are diversifying based on many
parameters. An example can be whites are more intelligent than
blacks. Similarly, a sexist attitude gets shaped to believe women are
bad drivers, men are good in certain skills, gays have HIV, etc.
• 3. Verbal and nonverbal manifestation of sexism: Sexism is defned as
individuals’ attitudes, beliefs, behaviors, and organizational, institutional,
or cultural practices that either refect negative evaluations of
the individuals based on their gender or support unequal status of women
and men (Swim & Hyers, 2009). The discrimination or prejudices that an
individual covertly learns begin to manifest at this stage. The manifestation
may vary depending upon the geographical location and sociocultural
practices of a particular community or society. The examples may include
eve-teasing, taunting, commenting, gesturing, fashing, sending
unwelcomed letters, gifts, messages, images, etc.
• 4. Acts of sexual harassment: This stage involves the misuse of power,
authority, or other resources to induce threat or fear or to trade or bargain
with the victim. The manifestation at this stage mostly progresses to
physically approaching the victim and exerting pressure using nonsexual
behaviors coaxing, hitting, etc.
• 5. Forced sexual behaviors: The perpetrator if succeeds to exert
pressure in the previous stage, usually now begins to misinterpret the
victim’s emotional state or verbal or behavioral cues under the light
of his illusionary success. This feeling of elated sense of giving them
the confidence to execute sexual behaviors including touching,
fondling, rubbing either genitals or other body parts or both or rape.
• 6. Sexual violence: This is the last stage where forced sexual
behaviors may include violence. The extreme form of violence may be
identified as either intentional murder or killing the victim or inflicting
violence to an extent that the victim dies his course of death
Recognizing the Suffering: Rape
Rape as an act of forced sexual relation, followed by violence, is the most
brutal form of sexual abuse.
Act of rape includes use of physical force, threats, torture and violent sexual
act, which is unwilling by victim, and it is one of most brutal forms of
violence and abuse.
At a symbolical level, this annuls the victim’s subjectivity.
This is a very specifc form of violence and criminal act – the offender needs
to humiliate the victim to dominate over her and hurt.
These sexual acts are degradation of human being; after the act, victims feel
frightened, ashamed, and helpless.
Most scholarly discussions on women‘s higher levels of fear focuses on the
horror of rape that may arise from another face-to-face victimization
(Ferraro, 1995:669).
Trauma After Rape
The strongest traumas for women are probably violence and sexual assault
and rape.
Rape is forced, violent sexual penetration against the victim‘s will, and
without the victim’s consent (Holstrom & Burges, 1975:1288).
Based on interviews with rape victims, Holstrom and Burges developed three
diagnostic categories of sexual trauma: rape trauma syndrome,
accessory-to-sex reaction, and sex-stress situation.

This categorization is helpful in understanding

• what this type of victimization causes to women,
• what short- and long-term consequences could be, and
• why comprehensive help and support is needed.
Holstrom and Burges (1975) provided and explained these three possible
states:
• Rape trauma syndrome is acute phase and include gastrointestinal
irritability, muscular tension, sleep-pattern disturbance, as well as
disorganization of lifestyle. Long-term effects include nightmares, emotional
disturbance, changing living place, and social surrounding.
• Accessory-to-sex-reaction puts victim in a subordinate position, because of
their stage of personality, cognitive development, and/or age (children and
adolescents). Offender has a dominative figure and power over victim, as
elder person and authority. By using manipulation and gifts (material goods,
money, candy), the offender tries to make relationship with the victim and
explain that sexual activity is desirable and appropriate. When the victim is
an accessory to sexual activity, trauma often shows itself through a gradual
social and psychological withdrawal from usual activities;
• Sex-stress situation is an anxiety reaction that results from the
circumstances surrounding sexual activity to which both parties initially
consented. The person for whom the sexual situation produces the most
anxiety usually brings the matter to the attention of a professional, such as a
police officer or one of the hospital staff members
Rape Trauma Syndrome
In 1974, Ann Burgess and Lynda Holmstrom published a research study describing how victims respond to the trauma of being
raped.
Burgess and Holmstrom interviewed 92 rape victims who had been admitted to a hospital for treatment.
Each victim was interviewed within an hour of admission and then interviewed again about a month later.
To describe the cluster of symptoms shared by the women in their sample, the label rape trauma syndrome (RTS) was coined.
In their original conceptualization, Burgess and Holmstrom described recovery from rape as a two-stage process, moving through
an acute crisis phase to a longer-term reorganization phase.
They believed the acute crisis phase typically lasted a few weeks and included severe physical symptoms, e.g.:
sleeplessness,
loss of appetite,
trembling,
numbness,
Pain.

Severe emotional disturbance manifested in symptoms such as

extreme fear,
shame,
persistent nightmares,
depression,
suicide attempts.
In the days and weeks following the rape, the victim’s intellectual functioning is also likely to be impaired. The victim
may seem
dazed,
confused,
out of touch with her immediate environment,
“in shock.”
The psychological aftermath of rape is captured in the following quote from a college student’s description of her
reactions to being raped by the resident advisor in her dormitory:
There’s no way to describe what was going on inside me. I was losing control and I’d never been so terrified and helpless in my life. I
felt as if my whole world had been kicked out from under me and I had been left to drift all alone in the darkness. I had horrible
nightmares in which I relived the rape and others which were even worse. I was terrified of being with people and terrified of being
alone. I couldn’t concentrate on anything and began failing several classes. Deciding what to wear in the morning was enough to make
me panic and cry uncontrollably. I was convinced I was going crazy. (Allison & Wrightsman, 1993, p. 153)

The length of the first phase varies, but eventually the rape victim moves into the second phase.
Whereas the first phase is an intense reaction to the trauma of being raped, the reorganization phase involves the long
process of recovery from rape.
Rape victims often respond by blaming themselves for not having been able to prevent or stop the rape.
They might castigate themselves for walking through a bad area of town, for leaving a window open or a door unlocked.
They might blame themselves for not having been able to fight off or run away from the attacker (Rowland, 1985).
One survivor wrote that: People tell me I shouldn’t feel like that, it wasn’t my fault, but still I feel like it was. Perhaps I
should just have fought harder and not been afraid. Perhaps I shouldn’t have let him do this to me. (Rape Survivors,
2001)
Impact of Sexual Abuse
The nature of sexual abuse depends upon inter and intrapersonal as well as
socioeconomic factors.
The nature of abuse including the stage or form of abuse, whether it was a
single episode or multiple exposures of short or long duration furnish the
impact on the victim as well as the perpetrator.
The perpetrator–victim relationship is elementary, whether it was a stranger
or an acquaintance.
The impact is more detrimental if the perpetrator is an immediate family
member which even threatens the sense of a safe place and future risk of
abuse in a foster or residential home.
A known person may involve confrontations or encounters that trigger the
suffering and makes the escape or avoidance more challenging.
The authors have attempted to comprehensively reason that makes the impact of sexual
abuse stronger and deeper than other forms of abuse or neglect.
• It’s silent; children, adolescents, or even adults are either persuaded not to talk or feel
ashamed to talk about it. The silence is not only imposed by the perpetrator, rather a
victim may choose to stay silent fearing familial or occupational, or social consequences of
it. The fear is mostly rooted in either confusion or dilemma or cost-beneft analysis. And
this kind of cognitive processing comes from various beliefs, stereotypes, norms, and
perceptions that are translated into actions in a routine living being carried forward from
one to another generation.
• Sexual abuse mostly encompasses other forms of abuse and affects multiple domains of
one’s life. It may be accompanied by verbal or physical abuse. The victims usually react in
expressed or controlled manner or shocked state of emotion.
• Other forms of abuse like physical or emotional may come to an end and the protective
factors may create resilience to sail through it. Also, the victim may get sympathy against
other forms of abuse as it’s talked about without any stigma attached to it.
• A person may continue to experience either stereotypes or sexist attitudes even if sexual
abuse may not advance to the verbal and nonverbal manifestation of sexism, acts of
sexual harassment, forced sexual behaviors, sexual violence.
Physical and Physiological
The physical impact on the victim may involve neglect of physical needs.
In severe stages of abuse, it may involve mild physical injuries to an extreme form of
physical disabilities or even death in extreme cases.
The perpetrator may also have a physical injury as a result of inflicting suffering on
the victim. It may result in a physical attack by the victim or others or even a mass
attack in certain social situations.
The physiological impact includes changes in neuro-biochemical pathways in the
body; exposure to abuse affects the endocrinology including metabolism (Neigh &
Nemeroff, 2009), circadian rhythm, heart rate, blood pressure, and body
temperature.
The changes in the biological pathways may put an individual at risk for various
short as well as long-term medical conditions or illnesses (Keeshin & Strawn, 2012).
Men are identified as perpetrators more than women due to increased
testosterone that may moderate attraction to cruel and violent cues in men
(Weierstall & Elbert, 2014).
Neural and Cognitive
The studies support the differences in stereotypes on sex-role are rooted in the limbic brain structures as well as
generation of social biases, prejudices, and stereotypes related to the amygdala, along with the importance of
dorsolateral, ventrolateral, frontal, and inferior parietal and the anterior cingulate cortices, perhaps in regulatory
and social roles (Takeuchi & Kawashima, 2015).
The brains have been studied and structural differences are found to be based on sex, gender roles, temperament
and trait, and offensive versus criminal acts.
Higher activations in the left lateral and medial superior frontal gyrus in abused are seen.
The batterers had an over-activation in the hippocampus, the fusiform gyrus, the PCC, the thalamus, and the
occipital cortex; while specific higher activation was observed in the precuneus on exposure to female aggression
pictures versus neutral pictures (Noll-Hussong & Guendel, 2010).
In addition, the children who have history of abuse show significant cognitive impairments driving them to
develop aberrant behaviors and are vulnerable to become perpetrators due to difficult experiences of
helplessness and fear in early years (Salter & Skuse, 2003; Burgess & McCormack, 1987).
When these adults gain power and authority, they can extend their aggression to unsuspecting innocent victims
(Konopka, 2015).
The benevolent sexism increases mental intrusions and suppresses working memory to hold the necessary data
and ignore task-irrelevant information that induces a state of self-doubt, anxiety, preoccupation, or threatened
sense of competence (Benoit & Thierry, 2007).
Psychological and Emotional
The perpetrators usually have low self-esteem and poor self-concept grounded in their early life experiences.
They tend to be low on emotion regulation and hounded by aggressive bents.
Also, since stereotypes and sexism are part of any society, so perpetrator’s beliefs and perceptions to either view
oneself as superior or others’ as inferior based on sex, age, authority, etc. may appear natural to him. Any threat
to this sense of superiority usually leads to victimizing the one viewed as inferior such as abusing children or
adolescents at home, a student at school, females in families by spouse or others, an employee at the workplace,
individuals in deserted locations as well as in crowds, etc.
The perpetrators are often criticized or rejected by a certain segment of the society after the onset of
perpetration; this further puts the perpetrator in a negative emotional state challenging his identity as a member
of the society.
These perceptions and beliefs conclude the interpretation of the emotional cues of others.
As a result, poor emotional intelligence may coach the sequel acts of sexual abuse.
On the other hand, the victim usually suffers a form of trauma in response to sexual abuse. The impact of abuse
may vary across the various stages of sexual abuse.
Even after achieving the aspired heights abuse may either continue or rather advance to other stages of sexual
abuse or one may indulge in perpetuating others.
This sense of either inferiority or superiority colors the self-esteem and self-concept.
The victims or perpetrators experience more negative emotions than non-abused individuals.
The differences may also be observed among those who suffered sexual abuse or other forms of abuse.
Physical and Mental Health
The victims and perpetrators both are known to suffer medical as well as mental health illnesses.
It’s not the mere act of sexual abuse which brings health issues but it’s the cumulative response to stress-causing
health issues.
The stress may grow insidiously drifting through various life stages and triggered by a certain event that can
catalyze the diagnosis of any medical or mental illness.
Some of the covert health issues that may go unnoticed include obesity, eating disorders, and body-image
disorders.
While in other cases disease or disorder may not be evident but personal, occupational, or social functioning may
be impaired due to unresolved trauma resulting from sexual abuse.
The victims of sexual abuse often suffer from psychosis, mood disorders, anxiety disorders, substance use, and
personality disorders with an overall higher prevalence for females (13.5%) than males (2.5%) (Molnar & Kessler,
2001).
Also, the victims often report problems in respiratory, gastrointestinal, musculoskeletal, neurological, and
gynecological functions, cardio-pulmonary symptoms, and obesity (Lechner & Steibel, 1993; Irish & Delahanty,
2010).
It may be firmly understood that sexual abuse disintegrates the individual.
The disintegration may induce either disruption or dysfunction in varied individuals depending upon the extent of
impact and more significantly the internal and external resources of support. The maximization of these resources
can result in minimizing the impact and direct the person on to the path of healing and recovery.
Recovery from Rape and Characteristics of
RTS (Coping)
Women who have been the victims of sexual assault are at greater risk of becoming
unemployed and divorced.
In their original research, Burgess and Holmstrom (1979a) found that, although 74% of rape
victims reported that they had returned to normal functioning about 5 years after the rape,
the other 26% reported that they had not yet recovered.
Although there is recovery, it is important to emphasize that recovery is not a process of
“getting over” the rape.
Instead, it involves finding ways to integrate the experience of rape into one’s life to
minimize negative after effects.
One rape survivor described the impact of rape on her life 12 years later:
It becomes part of your person as anything, any type of huge change in your life . . . I am a different
person than I was 12 years ago. And it will never go away. You learn to live around it . . . You try to take
it and use it to go in a positive direction but it never goes away. (Thompson, 1999)
Among the symptoms most strongly associated with rape are fear, anxiety, depression,
self-blame, disturbed social relationships, and sexual dysfunction.
These reactions tend to be especially intense during the 3 or 4 months following the rape
(Frazier, 2005).
 Although these same reactions may be associated with other types of trauma, the symptoms are likely to take a
particular form in rape victims.
For example, in rape victims, fear and anxiety are likely to be most strongly felt in situations or settings similar to
the one in which the rape occurred.
Rape survivors are especially likely to experience a loss of sexual desire and decreased enjoyment of sex with their
partners (Becker, Skinner, Abel, Axelrod, & Treacy, 1984; Campbell & Wasco, 2005).
Like other victims of trauma, rape victims face the long-term challenge of regaining a sense of safety and a sense
of control over their environment.
Of course, not every rape survivor experiences the same symptoms with the same intensity.

Mary Koss and her colleagues (Koss & Harvey, 1991; Koss & White, 2008) describe four broad classes of variables
that modulate the responses of rape survivors:
(1) characteristics of the person (e.g., age, maturity, coping capabilities, ability to make use of social support);
(2) characteristics of the event itself (e.g., the violence of the rape, the duration of the rape);
(3) the victim’s environment (e.g., support of friends and family, attitudes of surrounding community, physical
and emotional safety); and
(4) the therapeutic intervention (if any) used (e.g., timing of the intervention, how effectively the intervention
empowers the survivor).
These resources—both personal and environmental—strongly influence how effectively victims cope with the
psychological effects of rape.
Recognizing the Suffering: PTSD
The consequences of serious crimes such as rape, child abuse, and violence
may be traumatic to the victim as well as witnesses, family members and
friends.
There are numerous negative psychological outcomes which can result from
being victimized by crime, such as anxiety, depressive symptoms, eating
disorders, hostility, poorer general well-being and somatization.
However, the most extensively researched outcome of victimization is
posttraumatic stress disorder or PTSD.
Post-traumatic stress disorder is not the immediate consequence of trauma
but can follow at some stage after the trauma.
The clinician should be alert to the possibility of PTSD following from
traumatic victimization even if it does not immediately manifest itself.
The following is a brief sketch of some of the common features of PTSD:
• Profound depression and possible thoughts of suicide.
• Sleep disturbances of all sorts. Some may have difficulty sleeping; some may sleep for abnormally
long periods.
• Oversensitivity to noise. Noise can cause a startle response since the fight/flight reflex is
heightened.
• Paranoia or fear of others: the victim may feel afraid of the reoccurrence of the traumatic event,
which causes them to be uncomfortable with people who may be their future victimisers
• Repeatedly reliving the trauma in the form of intrusive flashbacks of the traumatic events during
waking hours. Because of the intensity of some flashbacks, victims can believe that they are
experiencing the events once again.
• At night, the events may be incorporated into nightmares.
Victims often go out of their way to avoid anything which remind them of the traumatic events.
The anniversary of the occurrence of the traumatic events may lead to renewed upset.
The psychiatric diagnostic category of post-traumatic stress disorder was first
introduced into the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
with the release of DSM-III in 1980.
The fifth version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
(DSM-V) was released by the American Psychiatric Association in 2013.
PTSD was previously categorised as an anxiety disorder in DSM-IV, it is
categorised as a trauma- and stress-related disorder in DSM-V.
The following are the main criteria which need to be met in order for there
to be a diagnosis of PTSD according to DSM-V (see Figure 4.1):
• PTSD involves a traumatic event involving actual or threat of death, serious
injury or sexual violation.
The individual may have directly experienced the traumatic event or witnessed it
happening to another person.
DSM-V has extended this to include close family members or close friends who learn
about traumatic events which happened to a close family member or to a friend.
• If a person experiences at first hand repeated or extreme examples of
the disturbing details of traumatic events experienced by others, then
PTSD may result. Note that, in this instance, the individual does not
witness the traumatic events directly at all.
DSM-V specifically excludes the media as the source of the disturbing detail
unless if the individual was exposed to this as part of their job.
This suggests that professionals such as therapists or social workers dealing
with distressing child abuse or rape cases might suffer PTSD as a consequence
of repeatedly hearing disturbing details.
Vicarious traumatisation shares many of the features of PTSD.
• There is clinically significant distress or significant impairment in
important areas of the individual’s functioning – socially, at work or
other aspects of life.
DSM-V gives four symptom clusters (re-experiencing, avoidance, arousal and negative
cognitions and mood) of PTSD.
The symptom groups are:
• Re-experiencing: This includes persistent images, thoughts, illusions, hallucinations, and so
forth as well as flashback episodes or psychological distress to things which remind the
individual of the traumatic event.
• Avoidance: The individual will avoid and show a numbed response to things which are in
some way associated with the trauma. So the individual will avoid talking and thinking about
the traumatic event or they may avoid places and people that could remind them of the
traumatic event.
• Arousal (known as hyperarousal in DSM-IV): This may involve irritability, self-destructive
behavior, concentration problems, sleep disturbance, and the like.
• Negative cognitions and mood: This may involve an ongoing lack of ability to experience
positive emotions or a persistent negative emotional state.
• The symptoms should be present for at least a month.
• The condition cannot be explained as a consequence of drugs or a medical condition.
What happens psychologically at the time of the trauma partly determines whether PTSD
follows.
If the victim experiences what is described as peritraumatic dissociation following a highly
traumatic rape or violent crime then there may be an increased risk of PTSD.
In peritraumatic dissociation the victim becomes detached from themselves psychologically
and may experience the assault as being perpetrated on another person and not themselves
– perhaps as if they were watching the assault at the cinema or on television.
So dissociation is when the sense of possessing a single identity that links our life stages
together is temporarily disrupted.
It is a way of coping with the traumatic experience in that extreme emotions such as
feelings of helplessness and horror are bypassed.
This is only of short-term benefit as the peritraumatic dissociation is believed to lead to
PTSD (e.g. Marshall and Schell, 2002) and the adverse consequences involved in that.
Peritraumatic dissociation is not necessary for PTSD to develop.
Actually, the cognitive factors involved can be somewhat wider than peritraumatic
dissociation (Halligan, Michael, Clark, and Ehlers, 2003). For example, data-driven
processing and lack of self-referent processing are also part of the process leading to PTSD.
Psychiatrists describe another condition known as acute stress disorder (ASD) which can
last for up to a month following the traumatic event.
It describes the intense and acute response that victims may show following the trauma.
It can last from two days to four weeks following the traumatic event.
After a month, these symptoms are likely to be diagnosed as PTSD which requires the
symptoms to be present for at least one month.
Acute stress disorder (ASD) involves substantial levels of impairment or distress.
Victims of ASD show intense emotional reactions to the traumatic stressor together with
many symptoms from various groupings of symptoms namely dissociation, arousal,
avoidance and re-experiencing according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorder (DSM-V) (American Psychiatric Association, 2013).
The same traumatic event may have both positive and negative consequences.
The concept of post-traumatic growth can involve various changes including one’s
philosophy of life, perception of self and interpersonal relationships.
What leads to a greater likelihood of PTSD?
One obvious factor in PTSD is that of gender.
It is clear from reviews of the research literature on this (Tolin and Foa, 2006) that females are more
likely than males to meet the diagnostic criteria for PTSD.
This is the case despite the fact that women are generally less likely to have experienced potentially
traumatic events.
Men were less likely to have experienced sexual trauma in childhood or adulthood, but they are more
likely to suffer accidents, violent assaults, combat, and witness death or injury.
Could the gender difference in PTSD simply be due to differential exposure to potentially traumatic
stressors? The answer is no, because if one compares men and women on a like-for-like basis by
comparing them in terms of particular types of stressors, women were still more likely to exhibit
PTSD.
However, for sexual trauma, women did not differ from men in terms of showing PTSD.
The nature of the trauma can make a difference to whether PTSD follows although subjective beliefs
about the level of threat to life due to the traumatic event may have more influence on the
development of PTSD than the objective size of the actual threat (Brewin and Holmes, 2003).
Norwood and Murphy (2012) showed that different forms of intimate partner abuse are differentially
associated with PTSD symptoms:
• Sexual violence (e.g. ‘My partner used force . . . to make me have sex’).
• Sexual coercion (e.g. ‘Had sexual intercourse with your partner even though you didn’t really want
to because he threatened to end your relationship’)
• Physical abuse which was measured using the physical assault subscale of the Conflict Tactics Scale.
This includes slapping, shoving, and using a gun or knife.
• Psychological abuse was measured using the Multidimensional Measure of Emotional Abuse
(Murphy and Hoover, 1999). This measures four different forms of psychological abuse – dominance/
intimidation (such as putting his face into the woman’s face to make a point), restrictive engulfment
(such as checking with friends where the woman was), denigration and hostile withdrawal (such as
refusal to discuss problems).
Appreciation of the nature of the cognitive processes involved is important to understanding PTSD
(Brewin and Holmes, 2003).
One important explanation is that the trauma actually destroys core attitudes, beliefs and
assumptions about the nature of their world and the victim’s ability to cope with it. For example, the
belief that other people are benevolent and well-intentioned may be shattered by the traumatic
event.
Someone who is subject to a malicious attack may find this difficult to reconcile with a sense of
community conducive to positive social relationships.
PTSD and re-victimisation
There are a number of features of PTSD which are obvious contenders to explain
revictimisation.
For example, the arousal (hyperarousal) cluster of PTSD symptoms encourage the victim to
be over-vigilant about possible attack. As a consequence, sufferers may have difficulty in
differentiating between true danger and false alarms – simply because the victim has so
many false alarms.
Numbing and dissociative symptoms may make it hard for the victim to take the initiative of
using resistance behaviours which otherwise may have dealt with using criminal
approaches.
Perhaps the most obvious of all, the association between PTSD and alcohol consumption
may mean that alcohol consumption leads to the greater risk of being re-victimised.
Being drunk may make a woman seem a better target to offenders, or women who drink
may be more likely to go to bars and nightclubs where they may be seen as a target.
When revictimised, PTSD may have a role to play in whether the victim reports the
crime to the police.
The relationship between PTSD and reporting varied according to which of the
symptoms of PTSD the victim manifested.
Those who had higher avoidance symptoms of PTSD were less likely to report the
crime to the police.
Of course, to report the crime is to confront it rather than avoid it.
So by not reporting the crime the victim need not think about it in the intense way
they would have to had they reported to the police.
Those who had higher re-experiencing and hyperarousal symptoms were more
likely to report the crime to the police.
These victims do not avoid thinking about their trauma so reporting the crime to
the police would not change the status quo.
Coping with Criminal Victimization
Victims of crime exhibit a wide range of responses to their personal crime victimisation.
In DeValve’s (2005) study, victims of crime mentioned the following consequences for themselves:
• angry at offender
• anxiety or panic attacks or some other psychological consequence
• fear of retaliation by the offender
• fear of the repetition of a similar event
• felt isolated and alone
• felt unsafe at home
• relationship with partner affected
• self-blame for the crime
• time off from work
• wanted revenge
• work affected
They had various feelings about the offender, including:
• wanting the offender committed to prison
• wanting an apology from the offender
• wanting the offender to receive help
Furthermore, they wanted to tell the offender about how the crime had adversely
affected them and wanted to understand why the offence happened.
Responses to crime can be varied and not everyone responds to victimisation in the
same way.
There can be serious, long-term consequences to victimisation which may
profoundly affect the individual’s day-to-day functioning.
The psychological damage that victims suffer may have long term implications, such
as making them more vulnerable to being re-victimised in the future.
Of course, people will naturally try to cope with PTSD themselves. However, research
suggests that simply attempting to avoid the disturbing thoughts is counterproductive since
it may delay recovery.
Social support is important in recovery, though the presence of negativity in the support
network is worse than having little or no social support (Brewin and Holmes, 2003).
Partners, friends and family are part of the social environment and the degree to which they
are supportive or negative towards the victim also have a role to play.
PTSD is affected by the social reactions experienced by sexual assault victims disclosing their
assault to other people.
Negative reactions include victim blaming, telling the victim that she could have done more
to prevent the assault from happening, and forcing the victim to go to the police, for
example.
Positive reactions include listening support, holding, telling the victim that she or he is loved
and helping to find resources that might be helpful to the victim.
Multivariate analysis suggested that the commonly observed correlation between victim
self-blame and PTSD symptoms may, in part be due to the influence of negative social
reactions from other people on the victim.
The mechanism through which this seems to work is that a victim who experiences
negative social reactions to the sexual crime will probably self-blame and adopt an
avoidance coping mechanism.
Typical maladaptive coping strategies include denial, substance use, and isolating
oneself socially.
Some victims have coping mechanisms which reduce the risk of PTSD.
Others adopt a forgiving attitude towards the perpetrators of the crime against
them
Forgiveness involves mental, emotional and behavioural actions which can change
negative responses into neutral or even positive ones.
The tendency to forgive is regarded as a personality trait which can be divided into
• self (e.g. agreeing that learning from bad things one has personally done helps get
over them);
• others (e.g agreeing that one can get past being disappointed by someone); and
• situations (e.g. agreeing with the view that with time the individual can come to
be understanding of negative life situations).
Coping strategies are mental and behavioural attempts to deal with the stress of the
terrorist incident.
Coping strategies may be:
problem-focused (concentrating on practical solutions, active coping, and planning);
emotion-focused (concentrating on things like finding emotional social support and venting
emotions); and
avoidance (concentrating on ignoring problems, mental disengagement from problems, and
behavioural disengagement from problems).
There was very clear evidence that the tendency to forgive was related strongly to
experiencing lower levels of PTSD symptoms.
However, to some extent there was a pathway suggesting those who have a higher
tendency to forgive also tend to adopt problem-focused coping strategy and that this also
led to with lower levels of PTSD symptoms.
Emotion-focused coping, on the other hand, was associated with higher levels of PTSD.
Imprisonment (Types of Imprisonment)
The criminal justice system can hold people in jails or prisons.
Jails are distinguished from prisons by their function.
Jails are short-term holding cells operated by cities or counties and administered by
local authorities (usually county sheriffs or city police).
Sometimes people convicted of misdemeanors (relatively minor crimes usually
punishable by less than a year in prison) serve out short sentences in the local jail.
Jails are also places where potentially dangerous defendants charged with serious
violent crimes can be held before and during trial.
Nonviolent criminals (e.g., embezzlers or thieves) might be held in jail before and
during trial to prevent them from fleeing to escape justice.
Later, if a defendant is convicted, he or she is held in jail between conviction and
sentencing, and between sentencing and transport to a prison.
Jails (like prisons) are overcrowded. Several detainees might be held in a large cell
and many scandals have involved assaults on non-serious offenders by violent
offenders held in the same cell (Quinn, 2007).
Prisons hold convicted criminals for long periods of time—sometimes years, sometimes decades.
Most prisoners will eventually be released into free society, but a small minority will live out the remainder of their natural lives
behind prison walls.
A tiny minority of prisoners (a fraction of 1%) will be held until they are killed in an execution chamber.
Every state has its own prison system where it houses people convicted of felonies.

There are also federal prisons for people who break federal law.
Federal laws attempt to target crimes that reach beyond the borders of individual states or crimes that involve multistate
conspiracies.
At present, drug offenders are the single largest group of inmates in federal prisons.

State and federal prisons range from minimum security to maximum security.

At one end of the continuum are the open security federal prisons for offenders convicted of nonviolent drug offenses or
white-collar crimes such as insider trading, fraud, or embezzlement.
These “Club Feds” as they are sometimes facetiously called, often have no fences or guards or cellblocks.
Prisoners are held in cottages or dormitories; they interact with few restrictions and spend much of their time doing light prison
labor.
These institutions usually have exercise equipment and sometimes they even have tennis courts and softball leagues.

Some medium security “campus style” prisons feature small, scattered buildings enclosed by a tall fence (Clear, Cole, & Reisig,
2010).
At the other end of the continuum are supermax prisons (super maximum-security prisons)
reserved for people deemed to be especially serious or violent criminals.
Inmates are held in small cells, interaction is tightly controlled, and educational and
recreational opportunities are scarce or entirely absent.
Inmates in Pelican Bay’s Secure Housing Unit (known as the “SHU”) spend nearly 23 hours a
day alone in their cells without counseling, vocational training, or prison jobs.
During the remaining hour, prisoners are permitted to exercise (often in shackles) in the
prison “yard.”
According to the federal judge who heard a class action suit alleging inhumane conditions at
Pelican Bay, these conditions of extreme isolation and sensory deprivation, “press the outer
bounds of what most humans can psychologically tolerate” (Madrid v. Gomez, 1995, p.
1267).
Indeed, over time, many of the inmates exposed to such conditions develop serious mental
illness, including profound depression and psychosis (Mears, 2008).
The Goals of Imprisonment
“Penal institution” implies a place of punishment.
The term “penitentiary” is religious in origin and refers to a place where one can
repent and atone for one’s sins.
The term “correctional institution” suggests a place where the behavior of the
criminal can be improved or corrected.

Prisons serve many ends.

The simplest goal is incapacitation through containment.
If a criminal is securely contained inside prison walls, he or she is unable to harm
people outside the prison.
Society is spared the crimes that may have been committed if the prisoner were still
free.
Successful incapacitation requires only that prisons hold criminals securely—that
they cannot escape.
A second goal of prison is deterrence.
For a particular criminal, it is hoped that the experience of suffering in prison will dissuade him from committing
further crimes after he is released from prison (this is called specific deterrence).
We also hope for general deterrence—that other people will choose not to commit crimes because they fear
going to prison.
Deterrence theory implies that we should make prisons as unpleasant as possible to boost their deterrent power.

The third goal, retribution, is less practical and more emotional.

Most of us feel a sense of rage and revulsion when we hear about an especially hideous crime (e.g., the murder of
a child). We want to see the murderer punished. Prison is a punishing environment where the convict will suffer.
Because societies are held together, in part, by a shared consensus of what constitutes immoral behavior,
law-abiding members of society feel a justified sense of moral outrage when someone commits a terrible crime.
The criminal who violates the moral order must be punished to restore moral balance.
Retribution, it is argued, promotes moral solidarity among law-abiding citizens and educates potential criminals
about which behaviors are strongly condemned (Berns, 1979).
The problem with retribution is that there is no precise formula for deciding how much suffering to inflict.
And there is also the question of how much pain can be ethically inflicted on criminals.
Retribution is largely backward-looking in that it focuses on the crime.
The final, most forward-looking goal of prisons is rehabilitation.
Nearly all prisoners will eventually be released back into free society, so it
makes sense to try to “improve” criminals during their time in prison.
Although today’s prison administrators seldom claim that they are in the
business of rehabilitating criminals, prisons in the United States were
developed for the explicit purpose of transforming criminals into productive
members of society.
A core problem is that the optimistic goal of rehabilitation is in conflict with
other goals of imprisonment.
Painful, unpleasant prisons are likely to make prisoners angrier and more
aggressive while providing few of the skills necessary to become law-abiding
citizens.
 Rehabilitation Ideal
Rehabilitation programs take many forms, but all aim to change the criminal so that he or
she will be less likely to continue breaking the law after release.
Some programs involve group therapy intended to change the thinking and behavior of
criminals.
Educational and training programs are also rehabilitative in that they attempt to provide
prisoners with marketable skills that lead to productive employment after release (Visher,
Debus, & Yahner, 2009).
Based on their extensive analyses of programs, Lawrence Sherman and his colleagues found
that the most effective programs attempt to:
(1) correct educational and job skill deficits,
(2) change attitudes and thinking patterns that promote criminal behavior,
(3) improve self-awareness and self-esteem,
(4) enhance interpersonal relationship skills,
(5) reduce drug abuse, and
(6) reduce contact with criminal peers
In addition, a meta-analysis of 58 studies examining the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral therapy
(CBT) in prisons found that, on average, such therapy reduced recidivism by more than a third. The
components of CBT varied across prisons, but usually the therapy targeted the behaviors are listed:
• Cognitive skills—Development of thinking and decision-making skills such as stopping to think
before acting, generating alternative solutions to problems, evaluating consequences of actions,
and making deliberate decisions about appropriate behavior.
• Cognitive restructuring—Use of activities and exercises aimed at recognizing and modifying the
distortions and errors that characterize criminogenic thinking.
• Interpersonal problem solving—Training to deal with interpersonal conflict and peer pressure.
• Social skills—Prosocial behavior, interpreting social cues, taking other persons’ feelings into
account, empathy.
• Anger control—Techniques for identifying anger triggers and cues that arouse anger, learning
self-control and how to maintain self-control under stress.
• Moral reasoning—Improving the ability to reason about right and wrong behavior, raising the level
of moral development, and getting offenders to consider the impact of their behavior on their
victims.
• Substance abuse—Application of any cognitive or behavioral technique to the specific issue of drug
or alcohol abuse.
• Behavior modification—Behavioral contracts and/or reward and penalty schemes designed to
reinforce appropriate behavior.
• Relapse prevention—Strategies to recognize and cope with high-risk situations and halt the relapse
cycle before lapses turn into full relapses.
• Individual attention—Use of individualized, one-on-one treatment to supplement group therapy.
When measured against the goal of rehabilitation, prisons are a failure.
The obvious problem with abandoning the goal of rehabilitation is that nearly all prisoners will eventually return to free
society.
If no attempt has been made to give them the skills and resources necessary to mend their ways, released convicts will
be likely to return to a life of crime.
There is ample evidence that prison does little to improve the behavior of criminals.

One large study compared two groups of convicts.

The groups were matched on a variety of variables including age, crime committed, and prior criminal record.
The researchers attempted to create two groups that differed only in the sentence they received: one group was sent to
prison while the other group received probation.
After tracking the offenders for more than 3 years, the researchers found that the prison group did worse than the
probation group.
Compared to the probation group, drug offenders who had been to prison were 11% more likely to be charged with
another crime, violent offenders sent to prison were 3% more likely to be charged again, and property offenders were
17% more likely to reoffend (Petersilia, Turner, & Peterson, 1986).
In this study, prison time increased the risk of future crime.

Furthermore, the overall rate of recidivism is not encouraging.

Following their release from prison, about 67% of former inmates will eventually be rearrested and sent back to prison
and about half the people released are back in prison within 3 years (Justice Policy Center, 2008; Reiman, 1998).
The harmful aspects of prison seem to work against rehabilitation.
Probation Parole
Probation involves suspending a jail or prison sentence and releasing the criminal into the community under the
supervision of a probation officer.
The conditions of probation can be fairly strict, requiring the convict
• To meet weekly with a probation officer,
• to find and keep a job,
• to submit to random drug tests, and
• to attend therapy groups.
If the offender violates the conditions of probation, he or she can be sent to prison.
Each year about 1.5 million Americans are placed on probation and about 1.3 million complete their probationary
sentence (Siegel, 1998).
Unfortunately, probation has a relatively high failure rate.
In a massive study of nearly 79,000 probationers in 17 states, 43% of people on probation were rearrested within
3 years (Langan & Cuniff, 1992).
Although this recidivism rate is discouraging, it is substantially better than the recidivism rate for inmates released
from prison.
The cost of probation is less than a third of the cost of prison (Justice Policy Center, 2008).
A relatively recent variation on probation is house arrest (also called home
confinement) enforced through some form of electronic monitoring.
House arrest is likely to involve many of the same conditions of parole, with
the additional requirement that the offender not leave his or her home or
yard except to go to school or work.
Electronic bracelets locked on to the ankle or wrist alert authorities when the
offender leaves the house.
A somewhat less high-tech version involves random, frequent,
computer-generated phone calls to the offender’s home.
These phone calls must be answered quickly by the offender (e.g., picked up
before the fourth ring).
Home arrest is often a last chance—if the offender leaves the designated
areas, he or she can be sent to prison.
Women in Prison and Mother-Child
Seperation
While it is widely recognized that the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world, women
prisoners have not received as much attention from the media, the legislature, and the fields of psychology and
criminology as compared with their male counterparts.
Yet the recent trend toward retributive justice dramatically effects the incarceration rates of women.
This is primarily because most women in prison are incarcerated as a result of nonviolent offenses (Luke, 2002;
Watterson, 1996).
The vast majority of female offenders commit drug-related crimes. While the increase in prison populations may
create a sense of security in the community, there are numerous detrimental effects which result from
incarcerating less serious offenders.
Among the most important issues regarding incarcerated women is their status as mothers.
Therefore, confinement serves to emotionally and physically separate mothers from children, which in turn
creates a host of debilitating effects on both the women and their children.
Additionally, the majority of women prisoners have a substance abuse problem for which they do not receive
treatment while imprisoned (Boudin, 1998; Luke, 2002).
The lack of services provided to women prisoners contributes greatly to their perpetual criminal behavior, and this
is connected to their drug addiction.
Furthermore, children of inmates are often overlooked victims, and this group is not small.
One report noted 22% of all minor children with a parent in prison were under the age of 5 (U.S.
Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2003a).
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics (1999), in 1998 approximately
950,000 women were involved with either federal, state, or local corrections, including those
incarcerated in jails and prisons and out on parole.
Brownell (1997) reported that at least 75% of female inmates have children, with the average of two
children per prisoner.
The U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics (2000) indicated that from 1991 to 1999,
there was a 98% increase in the number of children with a mother in prison.
Children of color are far more likely to have a parent incarcerated (Luke, 2002).
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics (2000), in 1999, African
American children were nine times as likely as their Caucasian counterparts to have a parent
incarcerated, while Latino children were three times more likely.
Having an incarcerated parent can be very traumatic and can lead to severe consequences for most
children, including anxiety, hyperarousal, depression, bedwetting, eating and sleeping disorders,
behavior and conduct disorders, attention disorders, and prolonged developmental regression(Center
for Children of Incarcerated Parents, as cited in Adalist-Estrin, 1994, p. 165).
The mother–child separation can have negative consequences for the mother as well.
Cases
When Annie was sent to prison for 1 to 3 years, she was 8 months pregnant. Upon
giving birth in prison, her baby was taken away from her and sent to live with Annie’s
mother, who was interested in becoming a foster parent. Annie became depressed
after being separated from her baby and after realizing that she might lose custody.
She is worried about the baby living with her mother because Annie reported being
physically abused by this woman while growing up. Despite this, she feels there are
no other alternatives: She cannot rely on the baby’s father to help her because he
beat and threatened her both before and during her pregnancy. Annie’s depression
has escalated to the point of her mentioning ways to commit suicide (Brownell, 1997).

Leslie is a first-time offender who is incarcerated. She has a 9-year-old son who was
living with her prior to her incarceration. Her son now lives with his father from whom
Leslie is separated. The father does not want their son to go to the jail but agreed to
allow visitation. The son wants to visit his mother, yet he is afraid of the jail. Leslie is
worried that her son will no longer respect her and that she may be causing
psychological damage to him. Although she wants to see her son, she does not want
him to see her in jail because she fears this will create more damage than has already
been done (Hairston, 1991b).
The number of women incarcerated in the United States is increasing with
every new law that requires stiffer sentences for minor offenses.
Although the vast majority of women prisoners are incarcerated as a result of
drug-related crimes, few programs exist inside the prisons to provide the
treatment that such women need in order to recover from their addictions.
Research has repeatedly shown that incarceration alone does not alter the
subsequent criminal behavior of drug-abusing offenders (Moon, Thompson, &
Bennett, 1993; National Institute of Corrections, 1991).
Policy reforms are drastically needed, given that most women prisoners are
substance abusers, most prisons do not offer substance abuse treatment, and
incarceration without a treatment component does not curb recidivism for
offenders who abuse drugs or alcohol.
Programs or psychotherapy groups designed to address their histories of abuse
are also scarce or nonexistent.
Although efforts have been made to improve programs for children and their incarcerated mothers, there are still many issues
that remain unresolved.
For instance, as Falk (1995) pointed out, because of their restrictions, many of these projects exclude one or more children of the
same family from visiting their mother. This could create a new set of problems for the family.
It may be unreasonable for all of a woman’s children to live with her in the prison, but programs should be developed where all
the children in one family can visit their mother for extended periods of time.
Because incarcerated women have suggested that being separated from their children is the most difficult aspect of their
confinement, support services designed specifically to assist them in adjusting to this separation should be developed further
(Hairston, 1991b; Luke, 2002).

Annie would have benefited greatly from assistance on how to cope with being separated from her child.
Correctional/forensic psychologists can also be instrumental in developing programs that support contact between imprisoned
mothers and their children.
Given that such programs did exist for a short period of time, it can be assumed that the legislature once saw promise in such
initiatives, but subsequently found that they were not beneficial or cost-effective.
With the expertise and insight of both criminology and psychology, programmatic solutions need to be explored.
Psychologists can also work with correctional staff and facilities on how best to implement and run programs where children
would live within the prison or come for overnight visitation.
Not all staff will be knowledgeable about how to provide a positive environment for children, so child development specialists
should be involved in the programming.
Also, the correctional facilities need to develop visitation areas which promote family bonding and help children overcome their
fears of going to the prison for visitation.
As Leslie’s case shows, children are afraid of jails and prisons and may not want to see their mothers for this reason.
Psychologists could also facilitate psychotherapy groups for women in need of support, as a result of their separation from their
children.
Once programs and services have been developed within the correctional institution, then policies should be developed to assist
these same women when released from prison.
Currently, there is no set standard for continuing services outside of the prison (Adalist-Estrin, 1994).
These mothers may be struggling with someone seeking to terminate their parental rights. Mothers released from prison need
assistance with this process.
Correctional facilities could have social workers on staff to help these women transition back into their families.

One area that has been neglected is the development of more comprehensive programs for fathers who become incarcerated.
In some situations, the father is the sole caretaker. As such, his children likely experience the same sense of grief over the loss of
the male parent.
Even if the children have a mother at home, they still have a connection with their father and they should be able to visit him in
order to maintain that connection.
Male correctional facilities could assist with this by improving their visitation areas and by allowing for extended child visits.
If the father is the sole caretaker of a young child, then policies for developing live-in programs at male prisons also should be
developed.