Law enforcement–based victim services personnel are unique among advocates, social workers, and other helping professionals in the justice system.

They have access to law enforcement agency personnel, crime reports and processes, and victims during crucial intersection points. As the only law enforcement agency personnel whose primary responsibility is to focus on victims’ rights and needs, they often connect with and support victims immediately after reports are made. Ensuring victims have access to law enforcement–based victim services personnel who provide robust and ethical services can mitigate the significant and long-term physical, psychological, and financial consequences of victimization.¹ It can also mitigate the harm felt by many victims who interact with the justice system when criminal investigations remain unsolved or do not progress to prosecution.

The Office for Victims of Crime (OVC) developed the Law Enforcement–Based Victim Services (LEV) program to support agencies in developing new or enhancing existing victim services. The LEV program seeks to build and sustain agencies’ capacities to address crime victims’ needs through trauma-informed direct services provided by agency-based victim services personnel and collaboration with community-based service providers. The program has the potential to transform both the agencies receiving these funds and the experiences of victims receiving assistance. However, there is a need for baseline research to inform the development of law enforcement–based victim services programs. To fill this gap, RTI International and the IACP are collaborating to conduct a multisite formative evaluation of the LEV program. The evaluation will be informed by practitioners and victims to help the field better understand the essential elements of the LEV program.

Need for the Formative Evaluation of the LEV Program

Learning more about law enforcement–based victim services and personnel will broaden the collective understanding of the impact of this unique role and ways to ensure victims know their rights and choices in the justice system.

The LEV Formative Evaluation began with a web-based survey to collect data from all 73 LEV sites about topics such as goals and objectives, target population, service provision, staffing, partnerships, data collection, and implementation challenges and successes. Sixty-eight sites responded to the survey and additional administrative information for all sites (e.g., agency size) was provided by the LEV training and technical assistance team.

In the next phase of the evaluation, 10 sites will be invited to participate in virtual interviews and site visits to gather more information about community and agency contexts, program components, choices around program design, and the intended outcomes of implementing LEV programs within each of their agencies. Collectively, this information will provide a better understanding of the LEV program models, including specific strengths and challenges. The formative evaluation is an important precursor to research on the impact and effectiveness of LEV programs. Before a program can be assessed, it must first be defined—that is, identify what are its core components.

Evaluation Discoveries

The evaluation team assessed the survey data using different analytic approaches (e.g., crosstabs, means comparison, factor analysis) to identify program similarities and differences across common features. The overarching takeaway is that the LEV programs are diverse in their designs and implementation, and one model cannot describe all programs. This makes sense given the varied contexts in which the programs are implemented and the many factors that can influence how a program is structured (e.g., agency culture, existing personnel and partnerships, victim crime types, services available, community resources). However, the analyses did reveal three key programmatic characteristics that appear to differentiate programs: agency size, program type (new or enhanced), and supervisor type.

Agency Size. LEV programs represent small agencies with fewer than 100 sworn officers (n = 35), medium agencies with 100–999 sworn officers (n = 21), and large agencies with 1,000 or more sworn officers (n = 17). Most small agencies used LEV funding to develop new programs. Most medium and large agencies are enhancing existing programs. LEV programs in large agencies are the most likely to be supervised by professional staff, while small and medium agency programs are more likely to be supervised by sworn officers. Large agency programs refer more services and directly provide fewer services than small and medium agencies. They also have the fewest routine internal (within the agency) collaborators but the most formal external partnerships.

Program Type. New programs (n = 42) are more likely to have a sworn officer with direct responsibility over LEV, while enhanced programs (n = 31) are evenly split between professional and sworn leadership. Unsurprisingly, enhanced programs are more developed than new programs in several respects, including referring and directly providing more types of services, collaborating with more types of internal personnel, having more formal external partnerships, and communicating more frequently with many external collaborators.

Supervisor Type. LEV programs are supervised by different types of staff, including sworn officers (n = 43), professional staff (n = 25), and external partners (n = 3). Programs led by professional staff are more likely to be using LEV program funding to enhance an existing program, while about two-thirds of programs led by sworn officers or external partners are developing a new program. In general, programs led by professional staff appear to have greater capacity than those led by sworn staff. Compared to programs led by sworn officers, programs with professional leadership refer fewer and directly provide more services, collaborate with more types of internal personnel, have more formal external partnerships, and communicate more frequently with many external collaborators.

Although not perfectly aligned, there appears to be a clustering of LEV program characteristics, such that new programs tend to be led by sworn officers and have lower capacity (i.e., fewer services, fewer internal and external partners, less communication). Although this is not particularly surprising, it reinforces that victim service programs need time to grow and evolve, and expectations around program capacity and staff responsibilities should be realistic. Developing internal relationships, identifying and securing partners, creating meaningful collaborations, and developing capacity to directly provide services are time-intensive, continual efforts.

The survey results will be used to inform virtual interviews and site visits as the focus shifts to learning why programs and activities are designed as they are, what is working well, what has been challenging, how implementation has or will be adjusted, and how programs are approaching sustainability.

Value to the Field

Through the LEV program, the role of law enforcement–based victim services personnel is being refined. This advances law enforcement–based victim services as a discipline and reinforces essential delineations from other law enforcement response efforts, such as mental health co-response and partnerships with community-based advocacy organizations.

Victims of crime deserve evidence-based programs that address their immediate and long-term needs. This formative evaluation is critical because it helps to understand whether victims’ needs are being met and how these programs can be improved to help law enforcement agencies best serve victims. This study will build the evidence base for law enforcement–based victim service programs through timely feedback about implementation challenges, facilitators of success, and lessons learned that will expand the profession’s knowledge of promising, sustainable models.

For more information about the LEV Formative Evaluation, please visit The IACP LEV Project webpage or send the evaluation team an email at lev_eval@rti.org.d

Note:

¹National Sheriffs’ Association, First Response to Victims of Crime (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Office for Victims of Crime; 2010); International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), Enhancing Law Enforcement Response to Victims: A 21st Century Strategy (Alexandria, VA: IACP, 2009); Malini Laxminarayan, “Procedural Justice and Psychological Effects of Criminal Proceedings: The Moderating Effect of Offense Type,” Social Justice Research 25, no. 4 (December 2012): 390–405; Malini, Laxminarayan “Procedural Justice and Psychological Effects of Criminal Proceedings: The Moderating Effect of Offense Type,” Social Justice Research 25, no. 4 (December 2012): 390–405.

Please cite as

Kelle Barrick, Elizabeth Tibaduiza, and Amy Durall, “Examining Intersections between Law  Enforcement and Victims,” IACP@Work, Police Chief 89, no. 5 (May 2022): 66–67.