VIOLENT OFFENDING AND VICTIMIZATION IN ADOLESCENCE: SOCIAL NETWORK MECHANISMS AND HOMOPHILY*

Although violent offending and victimization share many features, they can affect adolescent social relationships in distinct ways. To understand these differences, we take a network approach to examine the mechanisms responsible for similarities (i.e., homophily) in violent offending and violent victimization among friends. Our goal is to determine whether the social network mechanisms that produce homophily for violent offending are similar to or different from those that produce homophily for violent victimization. By using stochastic actor‐oriented modeling and two waves of friendship network data for 1,948 respondents from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, we examine homophily mechanisms of preference for similarity, avoidance, and influence with respect to youth violence and victimization. The results demonstrate that homophily observed for violent offending primarily reflects selection of similar others, whereas homophily observed for victimization reflects the tendency among alters to avoid victimized youth. These findings have important implications for future research and suggest that, among adolescents, violent offending and victimization homophily are the result of unique social processes.     

PREDICTING THE VIOLENT OFFENDER:THE DISCRIMINANT VALIDITY OF THE SUBCULTURE OF VIOLENCE*

This study tests the extent to which an adherence to the subculture of violence uniquely predicts a tendency to favor violence or instead predicts a more generalized offending repertoire, of which violence is part. Specifically, we use a unique analytic technique that provides the opportunity to distinguish empirically between the “violent offender” and/or the “frequent offender.” The results suggest that holding values favorable toward violence consistently predicts general offending but do not identify youth who systematically favor violence over nonviolence. This discussion considers the impact of these findings for the continued utility of the subculture of violence perspective.     

NEIGHBORHOOD DISADVANTAGE AND POLICE NOTIFICATION BY VICTIMS OF VIOLENCE*

This research uses data from the Area‐Identified National Crime Victimization Survey to examine the influence of neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage on the likelihood of police notification by victims of violence. The results indicate that neighborhood disadvantage does not significantly affect the likelihood of police notification among robbery and aggravated assault victims. However, a significant curvilinear effect of neighborhood disadvantage is observed for simple assault victims. The implications of these results for community‐level crime research and for theoretical perspectives on police notification are discussed.     

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.     

Fear,Social Interactions,and Violence Mitigation

The fear of crime is generally considered as a social ill that undermines dimensions of individual well-being. Prior research generally specifies the fear of crime as an outcome variable in order to understand its complex etiology. More recently, however, researchers have suggested fear has a deterrence function whereby it reduces individuals’ involvement in violent encounters. This notion could hold important clues to understand the social sources of violence. We examine whether the fear of crime inhibits involvement in violent encounters, both as offender or victim, and if adjustments in routine activities explain these effects. The results suggest fear of crime reduces violence involvement, in part, by constraining routine activities. We conclude that the fear of crime appears to be a mechanism of violence mitigation that, paradoxically, bolsters physical well-being. The results are discussed with regard to their implications for criminological theory and research on interpersonal violence.     

IN AND OUT OF HARM'S WAY: VIOLENT VICTIMIZATION AND THE SOCIAL CAPITAL OF FICTIVE STREET FAMILIES*

Homeless youth establish a variety of relationships with people they meet on the street. These associations generate different levels of the intangible resources of trust, commitment, and reciprocity that contribute to a person's social capital. We argue that the relationships homeless youth describe as “street families” resemble the fictive kin common among people who have limited resources, and that these relationships are a greater source of social capital than are other associations. Social capital may improve access to many valued outcomes, including protections. Regression analyses of violent victimization support our argument, demonstrating that fictive street families keep youth out of harm's way more than do other street associations.     

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.     

ADOLESCENT VIOLENT VICTIMIZATION AND PRECOCIOUS UNION FORMATION*

This article bridges scholarship in criminology and family sociology by extending arguments about “precocious exits” from adolescence to consider early union formation as a salient outcome of violent victimization for youths. Research indicates that early union formation is associated with several negative outcomes; yet the absence of attention to union formation as a consequence of violent victimization is noteworthy. We address this gap by drawing on life course theory and data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) to examine the effect of violent victimization (“street” violence) on the timing of first coresidential union formation—differentiating between marriage and cohabitation—in young adulthood. Estimates from Cox proportional hazard models show that adolescent victims of street violence experience higher rates of first union formation, especially marriage, early in the transition to adulthood; however, this effect declines with age, as such unions become more normative. Importantly, the effect of violent victimization on first union timing is robust to controls for nonviolent delinquency, substance abuse, and violent perpetration. We conclude by discussing directions for future research on the association between violent victimization and coresidential unions with an eye toward the implications of such early union formation for desistance.     

THE DIFFERENTIAL RISK OF RETALIATION BY RELATIONAL DISTANCE: A MORE GENERAL MODEL OF VIOLENT VICTIMIZATION*

This research attempts to elaborate a routine activity model of violent victimization by incorporating an explicit rational choice perspective on potential targets’ decision making to avoid violent encounters. We propose that the costs associated with a violent attack and the probability of offender retaliation depend on whether the offender's targeting strategy is opportunistic or deliberate—a function of the relational distance between the offender and target. Specifically, we propose that victim efforts to limit exposure to an offender may motivate a violent retaliatory response when the victim and offender are intimates compared to when they are strangers. We develop hypotheses based on these ideas and test them using data from the National Crime Victimization Survey (1992–2000). The results suggest that female targets are more sensitive to an offender's targeting strategy than are males. We conclude with a discussion of how knowledge of the potential risk of violent retaliation on the part of intimate and spousal offenders can be used to create more efficacious policies to protect victims of violence.     

AN EXPLORATORY STUDY OF THE VIOLENT VICTIMIZATION OF WOMEN: RACE/ETHNICITY AND SITUATIONAL CONTEXT*

Although much has been learned in recent years about the victimization experiences of women, there remains a considerable knowledge gap with respect to the victimization of women of different racial and ethnic backgrounds. In order to confront this issue, we use the large number of cases available in the National Crime Victimization Survey (1992–2000) to examine the risk and protective factors associated with violent victimization among non‐Hispanic white, non‐Hispanic black, Hispanic, Asian/Pacific Islander, and Native American women. We then describe in more detail the violent incidents against these women, looking for distinguishing patterns across groups. Our results are useful for fine‐tuning theories of victimization to explain variance in violence for females across racial and ethnic subgroups.     

CORRELATES OF VIOLENT POLITICAL EXTREMISM IN THE UNITED STATES*

Although research on terrorism has grown rapidly in recent years, few scholars have applied criminological theories to the analysis of individual‐level political extremism. Instead, researchers focused on radicalization have drawn primarily from political science and psychology and have overwhelmingly concentrated on violent extremists, leaving little variation in the dependent variable. With the use of a newly available data set, we test whether variables derived from prominent criminological theories are helpful in distinguishing between nonviolent and violent extremists. The results show that variables related to social control (lack of stable employment), social learning (radical peers), psychological perspectives (history of mental illness), and criminal record all have significant effects on participation in violent political extremism and are robust across multiple techniques for imputing missing data. At the same time, other common indicators of social control (e.g., education and marital status) and social learning perspectives (e.g., radical family members) were not significant in the multivariate models. We argue that terrorism research would benefit from including criminology insights and by considering political radicalization as a dynamic, evolving process, much as life‐course criminology treats more common forms of crime.     

MOVING BEYOND THE STEREOTYPES: WOMEN'S SUBJECTIVE ACCOUNTS OF THEIR VIOLENT CRIME*

This research builds on the recent scholarship that questions the anti‐agentic depictions of women's acts of violence. We inductively examine women's narratives of their violence to illuminate the diversity of motivations that appear to lie behind that violence. The narratives are drawn from a racially diverse sample of 205 women who were incarcerated in the Hennepin County Adult Detention Facility (Minneapolis, Minnesota). A life events calendar was used to assess women's involvement as both victims and offenders in violent crimes over the 36 months prior to their incarceration. We found that sixty‐six women provided information on 106 incidents of violence. Further, given the dominant theoretical framework in studying women's offending, we assess whether particular types of violent incidents are more likely to involve a partner as opposed to someone who is not a partner (friend, acquaintance, or stranger). Our contextualization of these events also includes an examination of the demographic and situational correlates of the incidents. Our findings reveal that women's reasons for engaging in violence are wide‐ranging and that we need not essentialize stereotypic views of gender in the study of violence.     

DEVELOPMENTAL PATTERNS OF ALCOHOL USE IN RELATION TO THE PERSISTENCE AND DESISTANCE OF SERIOUS VIOLENT OFFENDING AMONG AFRICAN AMERICAN AND CAUCASIAN YOUNG MEN*

This study examined the association of alcohol use with the persistence and desistance of serious violent offending among African American and Caucasian young men from adolescence into emerging adulthood. Five violence groups were defined: nonviolent, late‐onsetters, desisters, persisters, and one‐time offenders. We examined alcohol use trajectories for these groups spanning 12 through 24/25 years of age using a four‐piecewise linear growth model s 12–14, 14–18, 18–21, and 21–24/25 years of age. The persisters and desisters reported the highest levels of drinking at 13 years of age. From 14 to 18 years old, however, the late‐onsetters showed a higher rate of increase in drinking, compared with the persisters and desisters. Starting at 18 years of age, the desisters’ drinking trajectory started to resemble that of the nonviolent group, who showed the highest rate of increase in drinking during emerging adulthood. By 24/25 years of age, the persisters could not be distinguished from the late‐onsetters, but they were lower than the nonviolent and one‐timer groups in terms of their drinking. At 24/25 years old, the desisters were not significantly different from the other violence groups, although they seemed most similar to the nonviolent and one‐timer groups. We found no evidence that the association between drinking and violence differed for African Americans and Caucasians. The findings suggest that yearly changes in alcohol use could provide important clues for preventing violent offending.     

THE GENDERING OF VIOLENT DELINQUENCY*

This article addresses two issues that have received little attention in empirical research-the mechanisms explaining variation in violent delinquency within gender and variation in levels of violence across gender, or the gender gap. Toward these ends, the article synthesizes arguments from differential association theory, feminist theory, and gender studies. The outcome is a theoretical model of gender and violent delinquency that focuses on the interplay between structural positions and cultural processes. The theoretical model includes a core construct of differential association theory-the learning of definitions favorable to violence-as well as arguments about cultural definitions or meanings of gender and gender differences in the role of familial controls and peer influence, which are derived from feminist theory and gender studies. It then examines how these cultural processes are conditioned by structural positions. One of the key arguments is that the violent delinquency of females is controlled through rather subtle, indirect mechanisms, while the violence of males is controlled in more direct, overt ways. The results of the empirical analysis support the the-oretical arguments, contribute to the limited understanding of the variation in violent offending among females, and explain the sources of the gender gap in violent delinquency. The article thereby allows greater understanding of the broader phenomenon of juvenile violence.     

FIGHTING OVER TRIVIAL THINGS: EXPLAINING THE ISSUE OF CONTENTION IN VIOLENT ALTERCATIONS*

Violent altercations can lead to serious injury and death, and yet some interpersonal disputes that prompt physical violence originate over what are seemingly trivial issues. This study evaluates the theoretical premise that violence stemming from what typically are defined as trivial altercations can be explained by what is at stake in these conflicts; trivial altercations, or fights about “nothing,” actually represent symbolic contests of dominance and deference. These status contests are necessary primarily when the social relationship between opponents is symmetrical—when a dominance hierarchy is not clearly established. Data from interviews with incarcerated women in Ontario, Canada, show that relationship symmetry strongly predicts the issue of contention in their physically violent altercations. These findings suggest that, when violence erupts over trivial issues, both parties to the altercation essentially are locked in a battle for social rank.     

NEIGHBORHOOD CONTEXT AND NONLINEAR PEER EFFECTS ON ADOLESCENT VIOLENT CRIME*

Although evidence of the strong correlation between deviant behavior and exposure to deviant peers is overwhelming, researchers have yet to investigate whether a nonlinear functional form better captures this relationship than does a linear form. Researchers also have yet to examine the extent to which peer effects vary as a function of the neighborhood context. To address these issues, we use data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN) to examine 1) the functional form of the relationship between peer violence exposure and self‐reported violent crime and 2) the extent to which the effect of exposure to violent peers on violence is ecologically structured. Estimates from logistic hierarchical models indicate that the effect of peer violence exposure on violent crime decreases at higher values of peer violence, as reflected in a nonlinear relationship (expressed in terms of log‐odds). Furthermore, exposure to violent peers increases along with neighborhood disadvantage, and the effect of peer violence exposure on violent crime is attenuated as neighborhood disadvantage increases, which is reflected in a cross‐level peer violence/disadvantage interaction.     

THE VICTIM–OFFENDER OVERLAP IN CONTEXT: EXAMINING THE ROLE OF NEIGHBORHOOD STREET CULTURE*

Although numerous studies have found a strong relationship between offending and victimization risk, the etiology of this relationship is not well understood. Largely absent from this research is an explicit focus on neighborhood processes. However, theoretical work found in the subculture of violence literature implies that neighborhood street culture may help to account for the etiology of this phenomenon. Specifically, we should expect the magnitude of the victim–offender overlap to vary closely with neighborhood‐based violent conduct norms. This research uses waves 1 and 2 of the Family and Community Health Study (FACHS) to test the empirical validity of these notions. Our results show that the victim–offender overlap is not generalizeable across neighborhood contexts; in fact, it is especially strong in neighborhoods where the street culture predominates, whereas it is significantly weaker in areas where this culture is less prominent. These results indicate that neighborhood‐level cultural processes help to explain the victim–offender overlap, and they may cause this phenomenon to be context specific.     

INVESTIGATING THE STABILITY OF CO‐OFFENDING AND CO‐OFFENDERS AMONG A SAMPLE OF YOUTHFUL OFFENDERS*

Scholars have long argued that delinquency is a group phenomenon. Even so, minimal research exists on the nature, structure, and process of co‐offending. This investigation focuses on a particular void, namely the stability of 1) co‐offending and 2) co‐offender selection over time, for which divergent theoretical expectations currently exist that bear on issues central to general and developmental/life‐course theories of crime. By relying on individual‐level, longitudinal data for a sample of juvenile offenders from Philadelphia, we find that distinct trajectories of co‐offending exist over the course of the juvenile criminal career. This inquiry also develops an individualized measure of co‐offender stability, which reveals that delinquents generally tend not to “reuse” co‐offenders, although frequent offenders show a greater propensity to do so. The discussion considers the theoretical and policy implications of these findings as well as provides some avenues for future research.     

COMPROMISED POLICE LEGITIMACY AS A PREDICTOR OF VIOLENT CRIME IN STRUCTURALLY DISADVANTAGED COMMUNITIES*

This study examined whether indicators of compromised police legitimacy explained variations in violent crime within New York City police precincts from 1975 to 1996. Integrating models of urban cultural attenuation and procedural justice, the study hypothesized that variations in patterns of police misconduct and over/under policing (the indicators of police legitimacy) would predict variations in violent crime rates of communities characterized by concentrated structural disadvantage. Using a panel design and controlling for the relevant ecology of crime factors and spatial autocorrelation, the study found that in communities characterized by high disadvantage, incidents of police misconduct predicted variations in violent crime; in communities characterized by extreme disadvantage, both indicators of compromised police legitimacy (misconduct and over policing) predicted variations in violent crime. The study found no significant relationships between the indicators of police legitimacy and violent crime in communities of low disadvantage. Findings support emerging arguments that emphasize the importance of formal institutions of social control in the most structurally disadvantaged communities (that is, those often subjected to cultural attention) and suggest implications for the ecology of crime model and police accountability.