ABSTRACT This study investigates barriers to help-seeking among crime victims across diverse geographic areas utilizing data from a statewide victim needs assessment survey (n = 1, 114). Among the 951 participants who attempted to access services, 78.8% experienced systematic barriers to formal services. Logistic regression analysis uncovered that those in suburban and rural areas experienced differences in systemic barriers to those in urban areas. Developing targeted outreach strategies, addressing specific barriers in different settings (e.g., transportation in rural areas, cultural competence in suburban areas), and tailoring service delivery models to meet the diverse needs of crime victims, including diverse and immigrant populations, are crucial.

ABSTRACT The study examined how regulation of affective dependence relates to aggressiveness via jealousy and revenge. Two opposing dependency patterns – Pathological Affective Dependence (PAD) and Fear of Intimacy (FoI) – were tested against internalized (anger/hostility) and externalized (physical/verbal) aggressiveness. Adults from the general population (N = 437; 330 women, 107 men; M(age) = 32.9) completed measures of PAD, FoI, cognitive and behavioral jealousy, revenge motivation, and aggression. Structural equation models specified PAD/FoI as exogenous predictors, jealousy facets as parallel mediators, and revenge as a downstream mediator. PAD predicted both behavioral and cognitive jealousy; FoI predicted cognitive – but not behavioral – jealousy. Both jealousy types predicted revenge, which was positively associated with internalized and externalized aggressiveness. Behavioral jealousy also showed direct positive effects on both aggression forms, whereas cognitive jealousy had no direct effects. PAD and FoI retained direct positive associations with internalized aggressiveness; direct paths to externalized aggressiveness were non-significant for PAD and marginal for FoI. Jealousy-driven revenge appears to be a proximal pathway linking unregulated dependency to aggressive behavior. Targeting monitoring/controlling tendencies (behavioral jealousy), suspicious rumination (cognitive jealousy), and revenge motivations may help prevent escalation of relationship conflict.

ABSTRACT Men’s experiences of intimate partner violence (IPV), particularly how men interpret and make sense of these experiences, remain underexamined in research and practice. To address this gap, the present study analyzed open-ended responses from 247 racially and ethnically diverse men living in the United States whose descriptions of IPV victimization by female partners extended beyond discrete acts of abuse. Reflexive thematic analysis identified six interconnected themes: unhealthy relational dynamics, consequences of abuse, reflections on the relationship, intentional withholding of information, defending the partner’s behavior, and broader concerns. Together, these findings illuminate how men across racial and ethnic groups understand and narrate their IPV experiences within broader relational and psychological contexts, highlighting processes that can inform future research, trauma-informed practice, and interventions for male IPV victims.

ABSTRACT Due to their anonymous and large-scale nature, darknet forums dedicated to child sexual abuse material (CSAM) pose a major challenge to law enforcement. Therefore, prioritization on such forums is essential. The current study looks for linguistic indications of more severe behavior on a CSAM forum, focusing on hands-on abuse, expressed interest in the more extreme forms of CSAM, and participation in sharing CSAM. Using the corpus linguistic technique Keyness Analysis, we found that posts displaying more severe behavior showed more cognitive distortions such as sexualizing and objectifying children. The focus on lexical choices is a promising new direction in the investigation of this hidden community.

ABSTRACT People with convictions for sexual offending (PCSOs) are subject to a range of interventions designed to reduce the risk of recidivism following their release from prison. While victim/survivors’ views about such interventions are important to understand – especially given that victim/survivors may have unique insights into such measures – their views have rarely been canvassed. This article reports findings from a survey of Australian victim/survivors (N = 193) that documented their views about a range of post-custodial interventions for PCSOs. Victim/survivors favored pragmatic approaches to post-custodial management, reflecting utilitarian (i.e. oriented toward achieving a particular outcome) (rather than exclusively deontological (i.e. retributive)) reasoning. Our findings should give governments confidence to implement evidence-based rather than populist post-custodial interventions.

ABSTRACT Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), including abuse, neglect, and household dysfunction, are common among adolescents and have been linked to increased substance use. This study examined how depressive symptoms and low self-control mediate the relationship between ACEs and substance use in a statewide representative sample of over 23,000 Florida high school students. Using generalized structural equation modeling with bootstrapped indirect effects, analyses revealed that ACEs were significantly associated with greater substance use, and that both depressive symptoms and low self-control mediated this relationship. Although low self-control was the stronger mediator, these factors collectively accounted for more than one-third of the total association between ACEs and substance use. These findings highlight the need for prevention and intervention efforts that target both emotional and behavioral factors to reduce substance use risk among adolescents exposed to adversity. Further research is recommended to explore additional mediators and to confirm these pathways over time.

ABSTRACT Spousal physical violence remains a major public health concern in India, contributing substantially to women’s psychological distress. In the Middle Ganga Plain, which includes rural areas of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, patriarchal norms and widespread male out-migration may intensify this burden. This study investigates the association between spousal physical violence and nonspecific psychological distress (NPD) among married women using Propensity Score Matching (PSM) and examines whether the husband’s migration status modifies this relationship. Using data from 2701 married women (aged 15–49) in the Middle Ganga Plain project, NPD was measured using the Self-Reporting Questionnaire-20, and experiences of spousal physical violence were self-reported. Women exposed to spousal violence were more than twice as likely to report NPD (32%) as those unexposed (15%), and this association remained significant after PSM (average exposure effect = 0.165, p: < 0.001). Multivariable logistic regression further showed that women experiencing both spousal violence and husband’s migration had the highest predicted probability of distress (22.9%) compared with 18.5% among those exposed to violence but whose husbands had not migrated. These findings highlight the compounded psychological vulnerability of women in migration-affected households and the need for integrated interventions addressing both violence and mental health.

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to examine institutional adjustment among male and female juvenile offenders from the social support theoretical perspective. Specifically, it aims to answer (1) whether institutional support, measured as perceived correctional officer support and program support, had a significant and positive impact on juvenile offenders’ institutional adjustment and (2) whether there were gender-specific differences in institutional support and adjustment. The data were obtained from a survey of 610 juvenile offenders in the only juvenile reformatory of an economically developed southern province that houses serious juvenile offenders who are rarely researched in China. Structural Equation Modeling was used to conduct the analyses. The results revealed that both staff support and program support had a significant and positive impact on juvenile offenders’ adaptation to the reformatory, including their adaptation to the correctional environment and their physical well-being. In addition, gender differences were found across institutional support measures and personal anxiety. The findings highlight the importance of creating a supportive environment and gender-specific programs, such as anxiety reduction for male and female juvenile offenders, to ensure their smooth transition and adaptation in the reformatory.

ABSTRACT Research investigating the effects of policies designed to confront violence against women has shown that some types of policies have various desirable effects, such as lower rates of violence and changes in social norms. However, victim-blaming is a stubborn attitude that has been harder to change, especially in its covert manifestations. This article proposes that the persistent blaming of survivors of intimate partner violence (IPV) is partially explained by cognitive heuristics and, specifically, intuitive risk assessments. These flawed thought patterns lead to varying degrees of worry about different events and can help us understand why victim-blaming has endured even in contexts of robust legislation and public policies in this domain. Using survey experiments from Brazil, this article shows that people display optimism bias for crimes perpetrated by acquaintances, which has implications for risk-assessments. Further, taking a text-as-data approach, it also shows that people describe the causes of IPV in very different ways compared to stranger-perpetrated crimes. These findings have implications for subtle victim-blaming based on ideas of personal control.

ABSTRACT Scholars have studied the victim-offender overlap within the context of offending; however, only a handful of these studies have explored the link between arrest and violent victimization. This lack of attention to arrest experiences, specifically to timing of arrest, represents a large gap in the life course literature as we know that adverse experiences in adolescence, such as arrest, tend to carry more weight than adverse experiences that occur in adulthood. Using four waves of data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health), this study examines the age-graded association of arrest experiences with violent victimization, net of other important theoretical mechanisms (i.e. offending). Negative binomial regression models reveal that, net of offending, arrest experiences are a significant predictor of violent victimization. Interactions show that offending, victimization, and arrest are interdependent, with each influencing and amplifying the others through reciprocal processes. Findings highlight that age at first arrest operates as a turning point in predicting one’s victimization experiences, net of offending.