"Dr. Miller's Counseling Crime Victims is extremely effective...and it will occupy a central spot on my bookshelf...It is really a golden find." --Society for Police and Criminal Psychology "Here is the gold standard - the book for mental health clinicians helping crime victims sort through one of life's most difficult and traumatic experiences.--Richard L. Levenson, Jr., Psy.D., CTS Licensed Psychologist, New York State As more and more mental health professionals are becoming involved in the criminal justice system - as social service providers, victim advocates, court liaisons, expert witnesses, and clinical therapists - there has not been a commensurate improvement in the quality of text material to address this expanding and diverse field. Until now, students and practicing professionals have had to content themselves with either overly broad texts on criminology or trauma theory, or exceeding narrow tracts on one or another sub-area of victim services. Counseling Crime Victims provides a unique approach to helping victims of crime. By distilling and combining the best insights and lessons from the fields of criminology, victimology, trauma psychology, law enforcement, and psychotherapy, this book presents an integrated model of intervention for students and working mental health professionals in the criminal justice system. The book blends solid empirical research scholarship with practical, hit-the-ground-running recommendations that mental health professionals can begin using immediately in their daily work with victims. Counseling Crime Victims is a practical guide and reference book that working mental health clinicians will consult again and again in their daily practices. This book will also be of use to attorneys, judges, law enforcement officers, social service providers and others who work with crime victims in the criminal justice system. It can also serve as a college- and graduate-level text for courses in Psychology and Criminal Justice. Key Features of this Book: Victim assistance is becoming a full-fledged field for social workers and counselors A practical, hands-on guide which offers counselors techniques for dealing with victims of a wide variety of crimes Shows counselors how to guide their clients through the legal and judicial system

"This book is designed as a quick-reference resource for counselors, social workers, therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, R.N.s and medical staff, victim advocates and legal personnel, and all those engaged in supporting or helping victims of violence."--BOOK JACKET.

Feel the terror and anger experienced by crime victims as you read accounts of the highly charged therapy sessions at New York City’s Crime Victims’Counseling Services, the first group therapy services for crime victims of its kind. This emotionally charged book contains actual transcripts of interviews with crime victims as they explain the violations against them--their recollections of the assault itself and their feelings afterward. Their stories provide insights into the acute and profound trauma that crime victimization evokes. The helping and healing processes are a catharsis for the victim--and powerful reading for the rest of us.

Topics covered include overview of victimology, victim services and witness assistance programs, missing and murdered children in America, crisis intervention with battered women and their children, police-based crisis teams, telephone hotline programs and services for family violence survivors.

Although violent crime in the United States has declined over the past five years, certain groups appear to remain at disproportionately high risk for violent victimization. In the United States, people with developmental disabilities-such as mental retardation, autism, cerebral palsy, epilepsy, and severe learning disabilities may be included in this group. While the scientific evidence is scanty, a handful of studies from the United States, Canada, Australia, and Great Britain consistently find high rates of violence and abuse affecting people with these kinds of disabilities. A number of social and demographic trends are converging that may worsen the situation considerably over the next several years. The prevalence of developmental disabilities has increased in low-income populations, due to a number of factors, such as poor prenatal nutrition, lack of access to health care or better perinatal care for some fragile babies, and increases in child abuse and substance abuse during pregnancy. For example, a recent report of the California State Council on Developmental Disabilities found that during the past decade, while the state population increased by 20 percent, the number of persons with developmental disabilities in California increased by 52 percent and the population segment with mild mental retardation doubled. Because of a growing concern among parents and advocates regarding possible high rates of crime victimization among persons with developmental disabilities, Congress, through the Crime Victims with Disabilities Awareness Act of 1998, requested that the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences conduct a study to increase knowledge and information about crimes against individuals with developmental disabilities that will be useful in developing new strategies to reduce the incidence of crimes against those individuals. Crime Victims with Developmental Disabilities summarizes the workshop and addresses the following issues: (1) the nature and extent of crimes against individuals with developmental disabilities; (2) the risk factors associated with victimization of individuals with developmental disabilities; (3) the manner in which the justice system responds to crimes against individuals with disabilities; and (4) the means by which states may establish and maintain a centralized computer database on the incidence of crimes against individuals with disabilities within a state.