Examining the Neighborhood Context of the Violent Offending-Victimization Relationship: A Prospective Investigation

The persistent link between offending and victimization is one of the most robust empirical findings in criminological research. Despite important efforts to isolate the sources of this phenomenon, it is not fully understood. Much attention has been paid to the role of individual-level factors; however, few studies have systematically integrated neighborhood conditions. Using prospective data from the Pittsburgh Youth Study the current research examines a set of hypotheses regarding the interplay of neighborhood structural conditions and the victim-offender overlap. A multilevel analytical technique is applied to the data which purges time-varying covariates of all time-stable unobserved heterogeneity. Results indicate that the relationship between offending and victimization is pronounced in disadvantaged neighborhoods, while offending is not significantly related to victimization risk in contexts marked by lower levels of disadvantage. The implications of the results for theory are discussed, along with recommendations for future research.