| There is a growing body of research on how social cohesion and collective
efficacy function to create a sense of community and agency among people.
However, there is a paucity of research on whether social cohesion and
collective efficacy effect how victims of crime access services in response
to a victimization experience. Based on a sample of 1000 victims of crime in
a major urban centre, this paper will present a multi-variate model that
will outline a series of independent variables, such as age, education,
socio-economic status, type of victimization, victim-offender relationship,
victim's drug and alcohol problem profile, and perceptions of the responses
by criminal justice agents, that are related to victims' decisions to access
a wide range of community resources. In addition, this model will include
the intervening relationship of social cohesion and collective efficacy on
this decision making process. Based on Robert Sampson's work on social
cohesion and collective efficacy and crime patterns, we hypothesize that
higher levels of social cohesion and collective efficacy are related to
higher levels of victims' access to resources in the community. Our model
will attempt to distinguish the following four types of victim access
patterns: high access, moderate access, low access, and no access.
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Updated 05/20/2006