Concern for victims of crime is reflected in a wide range of policy initiatives worldwide, but research on the needs of victims and the availability and appropriateness of victim services is largely restricted to a small number of Western industrial societies, and little of it is cross-national. This paper describes a comparative survey of burglary victims in five cities in Poland, Hungary, and England. Although the nature of household burglaries was found to vary in the three countries, victims' reactions to burglary in Poland and Hungary largely conformed to the pattern found in Anglo-American research. However, there were some indications that Polish victims in particular were most severely affected. Service availability is also considered in some detail, with the English experience of Victim Support as a well established agency responding to the needs of victims in general and burglary victims in particular contrasted with less well established developments in Poland and Hungary, where needs far outstrip service provision.
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