The Time Course of Repeat Intimate Partner Violence

This study examines the time course of repeat victimization by assessing whether the opportunity for victim/offender contact influences the time lapse between successive incidents of intimate partner violence. Several measures of opportunity for victim/offender contact are used, including cohabitation, co-parenting, restraining order status, and victim unemployment. The study finds that some victims (i.e., those who live with the offender) are at risk of repeat victimization in a shorter period of time than other victims. However, the study yields conflicting findings about the relationship between other opportunity variables (i.e., co-parenting and victim unemployment) and the time lapse between successive incidents of intimate partner violence. Policy implications are discussed and suggestions are offered for future research on repeat intimate partner violence.     

DOES INCREASING WOMEN'S EDUCATION REDUCE THEIR RISK OF INTIMATE PARTNER VIOLENCE? EVIDENCE FROM AN EDUCATION POLICY REFORM

Although scholars have employed rigorous causal methods to examine the relationship between education and crime, few of them have taken a causal approach to the study of education and intimate partner violence (IPV) specifically. From a social causation perspective, improving women's education should protect them from violence, yet from a social selection perspective, education could proxy for unobserved factors that explain negative associations between education and IPV. In this study, I adjudicate between the two possibilities using an exogenous source of variation in education—a 1990s compulsory schooling reform in Peru. Specifically, I conduct an instrumented regression discontinuity that implicitly controls for women's unobserved endowments by comparing women who were aged slightly younger (N = 8,195) and slightly older (N = 6,645) than the school‐age cutoff at the time of the reform. Consistent with the social causation perspective, increasing women's schooling reduced both their recent and longer term probabilities of psychological, physical, and sexual IPV, as well as their recent and longer term probabilities of experiencing any IPV and polyvictimization. The results of supplemental mediation analyses provide support for three interrelated causal pathways—improvements in women's personal resources, delayed family formation, and changes in partner selection. These findings confirm the protective effects of women's education and further illuminate the mechanistic processes by which this occurs.     

INTIMATE PARTNER VIOLENCE RISK AMONG VICTIMS OF YOUTH VIOLENCE: ARE EARLY UNIONS BAD,BENEFICIAL, OR BENIGN?

Youth violent victimization (YVV) is a risk factor for precocious exits from adolescence via early coresidential union formation. It remains unclear, however, whether these early unions 1) are associated with intimate partner violence (IPV) victimization, 2) interrupt victim continuity or victim–offender overlap through protective and prosocial bonds, or 3) are inconsequential. By using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (N = 11,928; 18–34 years of age), we examine competing hypotheses for the effect of early union timing among victims of youth violence (n = 2,479)—differentiating across victimization only, perpetration only, and mutually combative relationships and considering variation by gender. The results from multinomial logistic regression models indicate that YVV increases the risk of IPV victimization in first unions, regardless of union timing; the null effect of timing indicates that delaying union formation would not reduce youth victims’ increased risk of continued victimization. Gender‐stratified analyses reveal that earlier unions can protect women against IPV perpetration, but this is partly the result of an increased risk of IPV victimization. The findings suggest that YVV has significant transformative consequences, leading to subsequent victimization by coresidential partners, and this association might be exacerbated among female victims who form early unions. We conclude by discussing directions for future research.     

The Relationship Between Adolescent Physical Abuse and Criminal Offending: Support for an Enduring and Generalized Cycle of Violence

Prospective investigations have demonstrated support for the cycle of violence theory. However, few studies have examined whether or not abuse occurring during adolescence increases the prevalence and frequency of criminal involvement, or explored the long-term consequences of such victimization. In addition, there has been little investigation of whether or not the effects of abuse vary depending on characteristics of the victim, such as sex, race/ethnicity, age, family structure or income. Using data from the National Youth Survey, this study demonstrates that adolescent physical abuse has immediate and enduring effects on the prevalence and frequency of a variety of self-reported offenses, including violent and non-violent crimes, drug use and intimate partner violence. Furthermore, the study reveals that while victimization increases the prevalence of offending for victims of varying backgrounds, the frequency of offending is moderated by family income, area of residence, and family structure. Implications for prevention are discussed.     

Preventing repeat incidents of family violence: analysis of data from three field experiments

Preventing repeat victimization is an area of criminology that has shown particular promise in recent years. Based on the premise that persons once victimized are at higher risk than others for future victimization, British officials developed successful programs that focus crime prevention efforts on victims. Of all crimes, family violence may have the highest repeat rate, especially in the first weeks after an incident is reported to the police. Accordingly, New York City officials developed an intervention program to reduce repeat incidents of family abuse. Three field experiments conducted during the 1990s evaluated whether or not this program, targeted at public housing residents who reported family violence to the police, reduced the rate of subsequent victimization. The findings produced within each study were not consistent across the studies; rather, these three experiments, separately analyzed, produce varying results. Since the composition of the samples varied across studies, however, one possible explanation is that this program has different effects within different populations. This paper reports outcomes from a series of analyses of pooled data from these three studies to address the inconsistencies. The results indicate that the intervention brought about greater reporting of subsequent abuse both to authorities and to research interviewers. The results are invariant across the three studies, indicating that greater reporting of abuse is not idiosyncratic to one particular population, and are consistent across the nature and source of outcome measures. These findings suggest the need for careful monitoring by the advocates and agencies that operate these types of programs and among those designing and testing future programs.     

Reasons for Returning to Abusive Relationships: Effects of Prior Victimization

Studies have demonstrated that women with a history of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) are at increased risk of revictimization, but research has not yet examined whether a history of CSA may affect patterns of remaining in or returning to abusive relationships in adulthood. This study examines the impact of a CSA history on decisions to return to abusive relationships in a sample of 104 adult domestic violence survivors. Participants were interviewed about the number of times that they had previously separated from and returned to their abusive partner, the factors that influenced their decision to return (both psychological/internal and environmental/external factors), and their perceived likelihood of returning in the future. As predicted, CSA survivors (n = 34) reported a significantly greater number of past separations than non-CSA survivors (n = 70). CSA survivors were also significantly more likely to report that their decisions to return were influenced by emotional attachment to the batterer. CSA survivors did not perceive themselves to be at greater risk of returning in the future, suggesting that they may be more likely to underestimate their vulnerability to returning to the battering relationship. Clinical implications of the findings are discussed.     

The Relationship Between Interpersonal Victimization and Women’s Criminal Sentencing: A Latent Class Analysis

Latent class analysis was used to identify subgroups of incarcerated women differentiated by experiences of child abuse and intimate partner violence victimization. The abuse subscales of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire and the Abuse Behavior Inventory were used as indicators. Data were drawn from a probability sample of 217 incarcerated women housed in two state-level prisons in North Carolina. Four classes were extracted—Low Victimization, Child Abuse, Lifetime Physical and Psychological Abuse, and Lifetime Sexual Abuse; classes were then related to current sentence length, holding criminological predictors constant. Women in the Child Abuse and Lifetime Sexual Abuse classes had significantly longer sentences, despite the lack of significant between-class differences on criminological predictors. Results suggest that certain victimization patterns, notably experiences of sexual violence, were associated with sentencing disparities despite the use of structured sentencing grids. Recommendations for trauma-informed sentencing are provided.     

Domestic violence: A national study of the nature, size and effects of domestic violence in the Netherlands

This article reports on a large-scale nation-wide study conducted by Intomart among 1,000 randomly selected Dutch adults (male and female) about their experiences with domestic violence. An important goal of the survey was to generate general information on domestic violence. It turns out that nearly half of the Dutch population (45%) has at one time been a victim of some form of non-incidental domestic violence. It was also demonstrated that both men and women become victims of domestic violence, and the high percentages of victimization during childhood are particularly striking. Furthermore, it turned out that domestic violence often involves a combination of physical, mental and sexual forms of violence.     

THE SOCIAL ECOLOGY OF VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN*

Despite more than three decades of research on the topic of violence against women, the relative contribution of individual, family and community factors to victimization risk remains unknown. We use self‐report data from the Area‐Identified National Crime Victimization Survey to study the correlates of stranger, nonstranger and intimate‘partner violence against women. Regardless of victim‐offender relationship, we find that the risk for victimization is highest among young, single women with children, particularly those who have lived in the current home for relatively shorter periods. Area family and age composition appear to have stronger direct relationships with women's violence than poverty or racial composition measures. We also find there to be more similarities than differences in the individual, family, and community correlates of stranger, nonstranger and intimate partner violence. We discuss these findings as part of the growing body of multilevel literature on violence and on violence against women.     

A REAPPRAISAL OF THE OVERLAP OF VIOLENT OFFENDERS AND VICTIMS*

Because research shows a close association between offending and victimization, recent work has argued that theories that account for crime should explain victimization as well. The current study uses a new approach to examine the extent of the overlap between offenders who commit violent crime and victims of violence to determine whether it is worthwhile to pursue separate theories to account for these phenomena. Specifically, we take the statistical approach that Osgood and Schreck (2007) developed for analyzing specialization in violent versus property offending and apply it to analyzing tendencies to gravitate toward violent offending versus victimization. In doing so, we treat the differentiation into victim and offender roles as an individual‐level latent variable while controlling for confounding between the likelihood that individuals will take either role in violent acts and their overall numbers of encounters with violence (as either offender or victim). Our purpose is to examine 1) whether significant differentiation can be observed between the tendency to be an offender versus the tendency to be a victim, 2) whether any such differential tendency is stable over time, and 3) if it is possible to predict whether individuals will tend toward violent offending versus victimization. Using two waves of data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to explore these objectives, we find significant and stable levels of differentiation between offenders and victims. Moreover, this differentiation is predictable with explanatory variables.     

REASONS FOR REPORTING AND NOT REPORTING DOMESTIC VIOLENCE TO THE POLICE*

The National Crime Victimization Survey is used to examine factors that encourage and inhibit victims of domestic violence from calling the police. Victims of domestic violence are less likely than victims of other types of violence to call the police because of their privacy concerns, their fear of reprisal, and their desire to protect offenders, but they are more likely to call for self‐protection and because they perceive domestic assaults as more serious. As a result of these and other offsetting factors, victims of domestic violence are just as likely as other victims of assault to call the police.     

Violent Conduct and Victimization Risk in the Urban Illicit Drug Economy: A Prospective Examination

A small but growing body of criminological research examines the nature of social control mechanisms in the context of urban illicit drug markets in order to understand patterns of violence. Several studies find that merchants operating in this economy experience relatively high rates of violent victimization. Existing theoretical and empirical research suggests, however, that an aggressive posture serves a deterrent function in the illicit marketplace. Merchants with a violent persona will have significantly lower rates of victimization compared to their less-violent counterparts. Using a within-person design applied to prospective longitudinal data from a sample of urban males, this paper examines the proposition that violent conduct attenuates the relationship between participation in the illicit drug marketplace and risk for violent victimization. Combined, the results offer partial support for this proposition. We discuss the implications of this study for research on violent behavior, illegal drug markets, and victimization.     

A COMPARISON OF TWO PROSECUTION POLICIES IN CASES OF INTIMATE PARTNER VIOLENCE: MANDATORY CASE FILING VERSUS FOLLOWING THE VICTIM'S LEAD*

Research Summary This study capitalized on differences in domestic violence prosecution policies between two boroughs of New York City. In Brooklyn, arrest cases generally are filed, but in the Bronx, cases typically are not filed when the victim does not want to proceed. We sampled 272 intimate partner cases declined by the Bronx prosecutor and 211 similar cases filed by the Brooklyn prosecutor. The Brooklyn policy is more costly, and most cases ultimately were dismissed. After 6 months, rearrest rates did not differ significantly between the two boroughs, although victims offered qualified support for the universal filing policy. Policy Implications Prosecutors face conflicting pressures when victims do not support prosecution. Victim empowerment and resource conservation favor declining such cases, but sending a message of zero tolerance favors filing. Our results support an intermediate policy of filing most cases but dropping them sooner to give victims a voice while avoiding heavy investments in cases headed for dismissal.