Crime Reduction Partnerships
Support Centre for Young Victims of Crime
(Please note this page has been translated for Internet publication into English from Swedish.)
The “Support Centre for Young Victims of Crime” project was initiated in the city of Stockholm in June 1999, in order to provide help and support to young crime victims.
The project is a collaboration between the social services administration’s Unit for Drug and Crime Prevention and the Youth Offending Division of the Stockholm City Police.
The objective is to aid and support the victims of crime, as well as to encourage the perpetrators of crime to desist from their criminal activities.
The social workers at the Support centre establish contact on a personal basis with all crime victims up to eighteen years of age who have filed a police crime report, having falling victim to a mugging, theft, assault etc. in the Stockholm city police district.
The young crime victims are offered counselling and the opportunity to participate in mediation. They also receive support from volunteer law students who accompany the victim and his or her family through the judicial process from the initial police report to the completion of court proceedings. The Support Centre also provides an open telephone line to which crime victims and their families can turn for advice, support and practical assistance. All assistance is provided free of charge, and those turning to the support centre are entitled to complete anonymity.
Background and objectives
During the latter part of the 1990s, the number of reported muggings committed by young persons increased dramatically, primarily in metropolitan areas. “Indications from the
field” show that more recently, smaller communities have also witnessed youth muggings.
A study conducted towards the end of 1999 by the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention (BRÅ) confirms that there have been substantial increases in the levels of this particular type of offence, where both the perpetrator and the victim are young persons. The study shows that a little over 10% of the boys and 5% of the girls had been mugged over the course of a 2-4 year period, when they were aged between thirteen and seventeen years. Social workers and police officers had long been aware that these young victims of crime were being “forgotten”. This was among the principle factors that led the social services administration in Stockholm and the County of Stockholm Police Authority to initiate the Support Centre for Young Victims of Crime on 1 June 1999.
The work of the project has been greatly facilitated by the fact that the Support Centre and the police are located in the same premises at the Police House. This means that there are daily contacts between the police and social workers and it facilitates close collaboration in tasks that involve both.
The way that young victims react to the crimes they have experienced varies considerably. Without exception, the victims that have been in contact with the Support Centre have experienced psychological problems as a result of the indignities that the crime has involved. Besides being subjected to the crime itself, additional psychological injuries may be sustained as a result of the failure of adult witnesses to intervene; the police investigation is discontinued as a result of the fact that the police are not always able to find the perpetrators; the provision of little or no support during stressful court proceedings; or the possible release of the perpetrator. Further indignity may be experienced if the victim does not then receive a damages payment of some kind from an insurance company. The job of the Support Centre involves working through and alleviating the consequences of these injuries.
Among the principle objectives of the Support Centre is to make special resources available for the work conducted with young crime victims, and thus to take their experiences of crime seriously, so that they do not lose faith in either the community of which they are a part, the adult world or the justice system. Through the provision of support for young victims of crime as their cases are processed through the justice system, society at large is given an improved opportunity to fully prosecute this type of offence. In addition, the study conducted by the National Council for Crime Prevention in Stockholm and Malmö showed that youths from an immigrant background were over-represented among the perpetrators of offences of this kind, which means that there is a clear risk for heightened levels of anti-immigrant sentiment and racism among the young victims of these crimes.
Working methods
The first contact takes place when the victim of crime reports the incident to the police together with his or her parents. The Youth Offending Division provides the Support
Centre with a copy of crime reports where the victim is under eighteen years of age and has been victimised in connection with a mugging, theft, harassment or assault etc. The
Support Centre then sends a hand-written, personal letter, together with an informative brochure, to the victim, offering help in the form of counselling. The Support Centre also
makes contact with young crime victims of whose existence it is notified by school counsellors, for example, victim support groups and help-lines and victim support workers within
the police organisation.
Counselling
Once the young person and his or her parents have contacted the Support Centre, an appointment is made for a first meeting. At this time the young person is given information
about what the Support Centre has to offer and three further counselling sessions are arranged, at which the parents do not participate. If there are a number of victims associated
with the same incident, they are offered the opportunity to participate in joint counselling sessions.
During the counselling sessions, the crime event itself is discussed in detail, as are the feelings that the crime has given rise to, a process known as debriefing. The aim of the counselling is to work through difficult emotions and to build up the young person’s self-confidence so that he or she is able to put the crime behind them and move forward. 73% of those visiting the Support Centre have been young males. Almost half of the crimes experienced by the Centre's female clients comprise sexual crimes of varying degrees of seriousness. This type of crime usually produces far more profound psychological and social consequences. The counselling sessions are therefore very different for boys and girls respectively. A not insignificant proportion of Support Centre clients have been exposed to crime repeatedly, either during the period when the counselling sessions were being conducted or once contacts with the Support Centre had ceased. It is quite natural for these young persons to contact the Support Centre again.
At the first meeting, the youth is given a “homework” assignment that consists in writing down as detailed a description of the crime as possible, and drawing a picture of the “crime scene”. Using this visual and written presentation of the incident as the starting point, it is possible to work through reactions and feelings that the crime has given rise to in the course of the counselling sessions which follow. The description may also be used should the case come to court, even though there may be some delay before this occurs.
During the second session, the discussion takes up the young person’s fears and the feeling of having been violated. This involves working through the unpleasant experiences connected with the crime, such as physical and psychological injuries and the loss of faith in one’s personal invulnerability.
At the third counselling session, the discussion includes the question of what consequences the perpetrator ought to face, and once again the young person is given a “homework” assignment. This time the assignment involves drawing two pictures, the first of which shows what they themselves would like to do to the perpetrator if they were to meet them again. The second picture is a drawing of the punishment they would like to see society mete out to the offender. The idea here is that this form of processing reduces the victim’s levels of aggression.
Law students as support personnel
The activities of support personnel constitute a very important part of the work of the Support Centre. These personnel are recruited from among the law students at Stockholm University.
Their task is to provide assistance and support for the victims of crime from the time of the original police crime report until court proceedings are completed. The support personnel
provide a step by step guide to the workings of the legal process for the victims, their families and the witnesses. In addition, they are present in court during the trial in
order to provide moral support. The most common questions asked of the support personnel focus on the trial itself. What happens in court, the roles of the various actors involved,
what the victim might receive by way of damages, and the perpetrator by way of punishment.
Parent meetings
Together with police from the Youth Offending Division in Stockholm, the Support Centre has arranged evening parent meetings, which amongst other things take up the following
questions:
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The activities of the Support Centre
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What happens in the course of a police investigation
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How children and young people usually react to being the victims of crime
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Information on courses in self-defence
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Being a parent to a child who has been victimised by crime
The Support Centre has also started self-help groups where mothers and siblings of victims of crime are given the opportunity to talk with other mothers and siblings who find themselves in the same situation.
Recently, the Support Centre has also been able to start providing counselling sessions for the parents of young victims of crime, scheduled in the late afternoon or during the evening.
Follow up and evaluation
In order to facilitate a more scientific evaluation of the work of the Support Centre, documentation constitutes a very important part of this work. Social workers at the Support
Centre maintain continuously updated statistics relating to numbers of visits, telephone conversations, meetings, and lectures etc. In addition, the victims of crime and their
parents are given the opportunity anonymously to complete an evaluative questionnaire once their contacts with the Support Centre have run their course.
Amongst other things, the statistics show that during its first two years of activity, the Support Centre was visited 1104 times. Of these visits, 1013 involved counselling sessions with victims of crime, 64 involved meetings with support personnel, 9 meetings of groups of mothers, and 18 educational visits. A total of 673 personal letters were written and sent to victims of crime. The Centre had contacts with a total of 263 clients, of which 251 were complainants in criminal cases. During this two-year period, 34 support personnel have been engaged, of which 13 were men and 21 women.
The questionnaires filled in by the victims of crime indicate that those who have been assigned a support person are very satisfied with the help they have received. The moral support provided by these personnel during the court case has meant that the victims have been less nervous, have been better able to express themselves and have been able to provide more credible accounts of the crime. The support personnel have also provided help in connection with the question of damages awards and other practical issues. At the same time, the law students have themselves gained important insights, which will serve them well in their future professional roles as judges, barristers, prosecutor’s etc.
Discussion
Prompt and regular contacts with young victims of crime first and foremost improve the conditions for a successful societal reaction to the criminal act, and mean that more instances
of this type of crime can be cleared up. When the perpetrators of these offences are not arrested and convicted, this involves profound psychological strain for the victims of
the crimes. Among young victims of crime, there is a widespread distrust of the judicial system’s desire and ability to react to this type of offence. In the longer term, the prompt
and consistent activities of the Support Centre, and the close collaboration with the Youth Offending Division in connection with the registration of crime complaints, should contribute
to improvements in the levels of confidence exhibited by young people with regard to the justice system in general and the police in particular. No scientific study of the crime
preventive effects of the Support Centre's work has yet been conducted. A study of this kind is at present being planned and the careful documentation of the work of the Centre
to date will be of considerable help when this study is carried out.
Although most young victims of crime are not subject to physical injury, the vast majority do suffer from various forms of psychological problems, which in turn often have negative social consequences. Despite the fact that the reactions of victims of crime are a highly individual phenomenon, the experience of victimisation in association with mugging or assault, for example, is acutely traumatic for the vast majority of young men and women.
In the study conducted by the National Council for Crime Prevention that was mentioned earlier, the data show that approximately half of the victims felt humiliated, violated, were angry with themselves, and so forth. Around 80-90% experienced feelings of hatred and a desire for revenge in relation to the perpetrators, feelings that often remained with the victims for a considerable time. For many, the crime involved profound changes in their everyday life, including fears of running into the perpetrator again, for example, avoiding certain places and certain people, experiencing nightmares and having difficulty sleeping.
These various forms of injury constitute a complicated and intractable complex of problems. The regular counselling sessions with social workers, together with the practical, legal and moral support provided by the support personnel, much improve the chances of repairing the damage that the crime may have caused to the victims’ fundamental feelings of security.
Following developments and creating sound strategies to prevent youth muggings and to react to those that do occur is also important from a more long-term perspective. The study referred to above shows that youths with an immigrant background are over-represented among the perpetrators of these offences. One consequence of this may be heightened levels of anti-immigrant sentiment among young people, an increased hostility towards immigrant groups and perhaps even an increase in involvement with groups professing anti-immigrant and racist ideologies. Youths from an immigrant background are also counted among the victims of these crimes, and it goes without saying that they receive the same help and support as any other young person. All young people have a right to the help and support of the Support Centre when they have been the victims of crime.
The work of the Support Centre constitutes an example of concrete everyday collaboration between two of the principle actors in the field of youth crime prevention, the police and the social services. At the same time, the pioneering character of the work means that it is under continuous development and, as has been described above, involves new groups such as law students and parents.
European Crime Prevention Award 2001 Jury Assessment
Being the victim of theft makes a big impact on your life. Young victims of theft formed a ‘forgotten group’. This is why the Support Centre for Young Victims of Crime opened its
doors in Stockholm on 1 June 1999. The relief workers of the Centre, which is housed in a police station, have the task of reducing the effects of the crime as much as possible.
An extra motive for providing help is that the victims feel that they have been taken seriously, and as a result do not lose their faith in society, the world of adults and the
judicial system. Moreover, it helps to avoid mounting racist feelings among the victims. Because research has shown that a disproportionate number of allochthonous youths are among
the offenders. An excellent initiative, in the opinion of the jury.
Last update: 24 May 2005