The Victim-Offender Overlap Contextualized: Unpacking Heterogeneity by Victimization Degree, Dimension, and Offending Type Among System-Involved Youth

Abstract

Victimized youth face elevated risks of enduring adverse life outcomes that impede successful transition into adulthood, including a higher propensity for criminal involvement than non-victimized youth. Extant studies have since revealed a significant overlap among juvenile victim and offending populations (“victim-offenders”): youth, especially system-involved youth, encounter a range of victimization experiences, participate in a variety of crime, and their experiences of victimization vary in their capacity to induce a criminal response. So far, however, criminologists have devoted limited attention to examining such variations in the victimization-offending link that influence the prevalence and magnitude of the overlap. In fact, most victim-offender research either depends on general measures of victimization and offending or disproportionately focuses on violence, which neglects the heterogeneity in victimization histories and offending behaviors among victimized youths. To better understand the intra-group variability of the youth victim-offender group, a deeper look into how different victimization events motivate distinct types of offending is needed. Using data from the Pathways to Desistance Study, this thesis describes and dissects differences in violent victimization experiences as a means of understanding variation in future criminal behavior among a high-risk, serious offending youth sample. The current research draws on general strain theory to assess whether differentiating degree of victimization and dimensions of victimization (i.e., frequency, variety, and recency) significantly affect predictions of participation in later violent and property crime. Findings indicate that differences in violent victimization experiences may shape meaningful differences in subsequent offending behaviors, but in nuanced ways. While the degree of victimization may matter, as there is notable variation in the magnitude of the effects of direct and vicarious victimization on both offending outcomes, such discrepancies do not appear to be statistically significant for this sample. Further, while specifying the strain dimensions of victimization may matter, as recency and variety dimensions distinguish degrees of vicarious victimization, they appear only to be salient considerations for less proximal exposure to violence (as opposed to direct experiences). Adding to the contributions of prior victim-offender literature, the results of this project highlight the importance of paying attention to sources of heterogeneity in the trauma histories of juvenile victim-offenders and bring to the forefront a discussion of the factors that may influence the historically robust association between victimization and crime.