Addressing the Victim–Offender Overlap: Advancing Evidence-Based Research to Better Service Criminally Involved People with Victimization Histories

ABSTRACT

We studied a representative sample of male and female inmates (N = 266) in two prisons (remand and sentenced) in Western Canada. Our research asks: what are the self-reported victimization histories of currently incarcerated men and women prior to first charge (i.e., before becoming known offenders) and during their life-course? As a second objective, we discuss how we sought to mobilize our findings to change relevant policy and police practice. We found that the overwhelming majority of our female participants had experienced violent, sexual, or property victimization throughout their life course; the majority had experienced victimization prior to first charge. Based on our findings, the local police service introduced victim services for the incarcerated population as well as made changes to their recruit training program to make new police officers aware of the victim–offender overlap and its effects. If replicated, the introduction of victim services for inmates in other jurisdictions and the education of police officers on the victim–offender overlap would emphasize the humanitarian recognition of supporting victims who need help, while also having a series of subsidiary benefits with respect to re-offending, resiliency, and police legitimacy.

KEYWORDS:

• Victim offender overlap
• police training
• police legitimacy
• victimization
• prisons

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. In Canada, provincial prisons hold all remand prisoners awaiting trial as well as those sentenced to less than two years. Federal prisons hold prisoners sentenced to more than two years.

2. We use the terms “inmates,” “offenders,” and “prisoners” interchangeably. When we asked participants in the wider University of Alberta Prison Project, they either showed no preference or preferred the term inmate over prisoner.

3. Based on our research agreement, we cannot name the Western Canadian province where we conducted our research.

4. The surveys were conducted as part of the University of Alberta Prison Project (UAPP, https://www.canadiancriminology.com/) which has amassed a much larger data set comprised of 587 semi-structured interviews on life experiences in Canadian prisons across four prisons in a Western Canadian province. The larger data set also consists of qualitative interviews with 131 correctional staff across those four institutions. Independent research inside of Canadian prisons is almost non-existent due to the closed and risk-averse nature of correctional ministries. Thus, our study comprises the largest independent mixed-methods study on Canadian prisons in the history of Canadian criminology.

5. The survey also included a question to indicate who had committed these acts against them. Several participants noted that family members, social workers, or other individuals had informed them about the abuse they had experienced when they were infants.

6. To the best of our knowledge.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the SSHRC (Social Science and Humanities Research Council Canada).