Patterns of Service Utilization Among Women Who Are Victims of Domestic Violence: The Contribution of Cultural Background, Characteristics of Violence, and Psychological Distress

2017 ◽  
Vol 35 (17-18) ◽  
pp. 3167-3187 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anat Ben-Porat
Keyword(s):  
Domestic Violence ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Service Utilization ◽  
Former Soviet Union ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Help Seeking ◽  
Latent Class ◽  
Cultural Background ◽  
Background Characteristics ◽  
Use Of Services

The study examined patterns of utilization of various services among female victims of domestic violence in Israel. The study looked at how cultural background, characteristics of violence, attempts at separation from partner, and women’s emotional distress contributed to patterns of service utilization. The sample of participants included 499 women who arrived at 12 shelters in Israel. Of those participants, 142 were Jewish, 156 were Arab, 125 had been born in the former Soviet Union (FSU), and 76 had been born in Ethiopia. Latent class analysis procedure was applied to identified patterns of service utilization. The procedure identified three patterns of service utilization: substantial use, frequent use of welfare and criminal justice services, and minimal use. Among Arab women, the likelihood of making substantial use of services was greater than the likelihood of making minimal use. Moreover, among the entire sample, the higher the levels of sexual abuse, violence, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the greater the likelihood of substantial versus minimal use of services. In addition, being employed, enduring higher levels of violence, and making attempts to separate increased the likelihood of utilization of welfare and criminal justice services versus minimal use. The study highlights the factors that motivate women to make use of services and the distinct strategies they use in the help-seeking process. At the practice level, the study emphasizes the need to take into account both the woman’s cultural context and the stage of help seeking she is at. In this way, professionals can provide differential treatment accordingly.

scholarly journals Race, Battered Women, and the Criminal Justice System

2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-21
Author(s):  
Harini Kav
Keyword(s):  
Domestic Violence ◽  
Social Movements ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Battered Women ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Criminal Case ◽  
Gender Biases ◽  
Legislative Changes ◽  
Domestic Violence Survivors

This paper looks at the criminal case of Deborah Peagler and the California habeas law and explores the effectiveness of legislative changes to domestic battery laws as a mechanism for change in the criminal justice system in regards to its treatment of domestic violence survivors accused of committing a crime against their abuser. It focuses on the androcentric and racialized nature of the criminal justice system and argues that while legislative changes brought about by social movements facilitate opportunities for women like Peagler to pursue just outcomes, they do not counter the gender biases prevalent in the justice system and, alone, are insufficient in improving the treatment of domestic violence survivors in the criminal justice system.

Evaluating Criminal Justice Interventions for Domestic Violence

2000 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 252-270 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Emerson Dobash ◽  
Russell P. Dobash
Keyword(s):  
Domestic Violence ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
North American ◽  
American Studies ◽  
Evaluation Study ◽  
Contextual Approach ◽  
Violent Men

In this article, the authors consider various approaches to the evaluation of criminal justice interventions in the area of domestic violence. Evaluations have been conducted on a range of interventions, but this article focuses particularly on evaluations of arrest and programs for violent abusers. The authors contrast randomized designs used in the primarily North American studies of arrest with the extant evaluations of abuser programs and argue for the use of more theoretically informed contextual evaluations of criminal justice interventions. Using their own 3-year evaluation study of two Scottish abuser programs, the authors demonstrate how the contextual approach is attuned to both outcome and process and results in more empirically informed assessments of how change is achieved in the behavior and orientations of violent men. The authors argue that evaluations of criminal justice-based interventions should be designed to fit the phenomena under consideration as well as the intervention itself.

scholarly journals Examination of Heterogeneous Societies

2016 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fumiko Kano Glückstad ◽  
Mikkel N. Schmidt ◽  
Morten Mørup
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Latent Class ◽  
Cultural Analysis ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Relational Model ◽  
Response Patterns ◽  
World Value Survey ◽  
Applied Model ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
Cultural Data

The recent development of data analytic tools rooted around the Multi-Group Latent Class Analysis (MGLCA) has enabled the examination of heterogeneous datasets in a cross-cultural context. Although the MGLCA is considered as an established and popular cross-cultural data analysis approach, the infinite relational model (IRM) is a new and disruptive type of unsupervised clustering approach that has been developed recently by cognitive psychologists and computer scientists. In this article, an extended version of the IRM coined the multinominal IRM—or mIRM in short—is applied to a cross-cultural analysis of survey data available from the World Value Survey organization. Specifically, the present work analyzes response patterns of the Portrait Value Questionnaire (PVQ) representing Schwartz’s 10 basic values of Japanese and Swedes. The applied model exposes heterogeneous structures of the two societies consisting of fine-grained response patterns expressed by the respective subpopulations and extracts latent typological structures contrasting and highlighting similarities and differences between these two societies. In the final section, we discuss similarities and differences identified between the MGLCA and the mIRM approaches, which indicate potential applications and contributions of the mIRM and the general IRM framework for future cross-cultural data analyses.

Psychological distress among recent immigrants from the former Soviet Union to Israel, II. The effects of the Gulf War

1996 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 503-510 ◽  
Author(s):  
Y. Lerner ◽  
N. Zilber
Keyword(s):  
Psychological Distress ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Former Soviet Union ◽  
Help Seeking ◽  
Psychological Symptoms ◽  
Gulf War ◽  
Recent Immigrants ◽  
Help Seeking Behaviour ◽  
Quasi Experimental ◽  
Post War

SynopsisThe psychological effects of the Gulf War were studied on a group of Israeli civilians particularly at risk, viz. recent immigrants from the former Soviet Union. A quasi-experimental design was used. A sample of immigrants who had already been screened for psychological distress just before the war were reassessed after the war with the same instrument (PERI demoralization questionnaire). Various parameters related to the war period were also assessed. Psychological symptoms during the war were significantly associated with pre-war level of distress and with actual physical harm from the missiles, but not with exposure to danger (proximity of residence to areas hit by missiles). Correlates of behaviour in the face of life-threatening danger during the war (change of residence and help-seeking behaviour) were also identified. Overall the level of post-war psychological distress was not found to be higher than pre-war levels. This was explained by the immigrants' feelings of shared fate, belonging and sense of cohesion, which characterize the general Israeli population during war time.

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