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Intimate partner homicides often involve coercive control prior to the murder while stalking following separation has been associated with control within the relationship as well as with lethal violence. The goal of the present study was to investigate how rural and urban community professionals who encounter intimate partner violence (IPV) victims perceive potential risk factors for intimate partner homicide related to firearms and coercive control. Criminal justice and victim service professionals (N = 133) from one urban and four rural communities participated in structured key informant interviews. A purposeful sampling procedure was employed to target professionals with expertise in domestic violence and/or firearms, followed by snowball sampling to maximize the response rate. The only risk factor that was directly associated with perceived risk of potentially fatal intimate partner gun violence was the perceived risk of an abuser threatening a victim with a gun. However, coercive control, separation, and stalking all mediated the relationship between the perceived risk of an abuser's access to a gun and the perceived risk of an abuser threatening the victim with a gun. These results highlight the importance of controlling behavior following separation for risk assessment and that participants in the present study were aware of the potentially dangerous ramifications of such nonphysically violent risk factors for the risk of injury or death by a firearm at the hands of an intimate partner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research has consistently found that more women worry about their personal safety and feel vulnerable to most every crime compared with men suggesting there is a gender fear gap. Environmental risk and prior victimization history impact concerns about personal safety. However, few studies include stalking as part of the victimization history. Two reasons studies may not include stalking are that adding more questions to a research assessment increases participant burden and measurement of stalking has not always been clear. The current study used a community sample of 2,719 men and women and a five-item stalking assessment to examine the prevalence and impact of stalking and stalking-related fear on concern about personal safety, perceived vulnerability to an attack, perceptions that risk of victimization is higher due to personal characteristics, discomfort when thinking about safety, and posttraumatic stress symptoms controlling for victimization history, age, and environment risk by gender. Overall, 30% of women and 12% of men experienced stalking using the extreme fear standard which is double the national rates. Stalking-related fear, for both women and men, was associated with all of the outcome measures. Furthermore, there were significant main effects of gender after controlling for stalking-related fear on three of the outcomes consistent with the gender fear gap. Based on these results, research studies should consider including stalking as part of the victimization history as it is likely to impact health and mental health outcomes as well as personal safety concerns and responses for both men and women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Safety efficacy, or the perceived capability of preventing or deterring a personal safety threat, has emerged as a potentially important construct in personal safety outcomes. However, there has been limited research on factors that may facilitate or inhibit safety efficacy. The overall goal of this study was to examine indices of past history, mind-set, and emotion regulation associated with safety efficacy as informed by the self-efficacy literature. This study used a national sample of 821 women who completed a survey on personal safety concerns and responses. There were four main findings from this study: (a) although victimization experiences in this study were high, there were no differences in past or recent victimization experiences by safety efficacy group; (b) responding passively and feeling uncomfortable and nervous in interpersonal conflict situations were significantly associated with lower safety efficacy; (c) those with lower safety efficacy felt less confident in protecting themselves, were less likely to feel they could affect the outcome of external events, were less likely to seek information about their personal safety, and were more likely to feel personal characteristics increased their risk of victimization; and (d) discomfort when thinking about personal safety as well as emotion regulation problems were negatively associated with safety efficacy, yet have received limited research attention with regard to their role in personal safety outcomes. More research is needed to build on the success of various interventions that have shown evidence of increased safety efficacy and decreased revictimization as well as to reach women who may actively avoid prevention programs because they are not comfortable thinking about their safety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although low income is common across the U.S. probation population, women offenders experience it more than men. However, despite the connection between income and probation outcomes, limited research has been conducted on programs that could improve the financial circumstances of female probationers. This study examined the influence on probation outcomes of receiving government financial assistance programs and employment services. The findings indicated that participants who received Social Security Disability Insurance more often were less likely to become incarcerated. Implications include expanding cash assistance programs to provide more substantial monthly incomes for women probationers, particularly those with disabilities, in order to increase financial stability and improve criminal justice outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Justice-involved women experience significantly higher rates of victimization and psychological distress, and these experiences place women at greater risk of initial and ongoing involvement in the criminal justice system. This research explored the relationship between victimization, the hypothesized mediators (social support and coping), and psychological distress among a sample of 406 victimized women on probation/parole. Results of the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) were significant and indicated a partial mediation model (74%) with both direct and indirect effects. Based upon the results of this research, implications and future research are explored regarding gender-responsive practices for this population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research has documented that, in general, women are more concerned about their personal safety and take more safety precautions than men. However, this study looks beyond gender by examining the association of three overall factors including victimization history, perceived risk of future victimization, and personal control with worry about safety, safety responses, and bystander intervention intentions for 270 men and 821 women. There were four main findings from this study including the following: (a) The two most consistently associated factors with worry about safety, safety responses, and bystander intervention intentions were higher perceived risk of violent victimization and safety efficacy; (b) recent victimization, rather than victimization history, played an important role in safety responses particularly for women; (c) different patterns of factors are associated with different safety responses demonstrating the importance of examining a wide variety of safety responses; and (d) the pattern of factors associated with worry about safety and safety responses do differ by gender but also had some important similarities. Implications for future research and prevention as well as safety planning interventions are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to gain a deeper understanding of why communities differing in culture and resources are willing and able to implement gun confiscation as part of a protective order in the absence of a uniform statewide gun law. Specifically, the perceived risk of intimate partner homicide and gun violence, effectiveness of implementing gun confiscation, and the barriers to implementing gun confiscation were assessed. Interviews were conducted with key community professionals (N = 133) who worked in victim services and the justice system in one urban community and four rural, under-resourced communities. Analyses revealed that professionals in the rural communities viewed the risk of intimate partner homicide and gun violence as lower, and the process of implementing gun confiscation as less effective than professionals in the urban community. In addition, urban justice system professionals, in comparison with all other professionals, reported fewer barriers to enforcing the gun confiscation police and were more likely to downplay law enforcement limitations in the community. The results have implications for developing more effective regional strategies in states that lack domestic violence gun laws as a means to increase a community's ability to enforce gun policies and initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study used focus groups to collect qualitative data to better understand the complexity of how women with domestic violence experiences feel about gun violence and protections from gun violence within the context of partner violence. Participants consisted of 42 women who were recruited through domestic violence shelters and programs in a single U.S. state. Three main themes were examined in the focus group discussions: (a) guns used within the context of partner abuse, (b) victims using guns as protection from an abuser, and (c) mandated gun restrictions as protection in partner abuse. A total of nine subthemes were organized under the three general themes. Within the first main theme, participants discussed that although abuse occurs with and without guns, guns are uniquely dangerous. In the second main theme, participants expressed concern regarding the dangers of using a gun for self-defense as well as the individual right to own a gun for self-defense. In the third main theme, participants expressed their frustrations that victims are not taken seriously by the justice system and the difficulties of enforcing mandated gun restrictions. The findings have implications for developing protective strategies against gun violence for victims of partner violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]