This study explores which law enforcement agencies are more likely than others to implement victim assistance programs inside their agency (hereafter “law enforcement-based victim assistance (LEVA)”), focusing on four domains that may shape their decisions to implement: representative bureaucracy, police-community relations, community characteristics and resource availability.
Utilizing the 2016 Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics (LEMAS) dataset, merged with additional data sources, we conducted multinomial logistic regression analyses on 2,389 agencies in the USA.
Agencies that implement a form of LEVA likely have the following characteristics: they are racially/ethnically diverse, stick to the community policing ideal, make their data more accessible, deal with a large volume of 911 calls, are surrounded by a conservative community and are able to utilize more resources.
Law enforcement agencies have unique contexts and different capacities for implementing a new type of service. This calls for actionable and tailored strategies that can promote future implementations of LEVA.
For victims of crime, navigating the law enforcement system is an essential yet challenging process. This study highlights the need for implementing LEVA and offers a comprehensive framework that explains why some agencies implement it while others do not.
