Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency

Examine the prevalence and correlates of intimate partner violence (IPV) victimization and offending, as well as the overlap of these experiences.

Data from wave 4 of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health were analyzed to examine IPV among adults ages 24 to 33. A multinomial logistic regression model was estimated to determine whether the correlates of IPV vary across victims, perpetrators, and victim-perpetrators.

Approximately 20% of respondents reported some IPV involvement in the past year, one-third of whom reported victimization and perpetration. The victim-offender overlap was observed for males and females across various measures of IPV. Bivariate correlations suggest victimization and perpetration have common correlates. Multivariate analysis, however, reveals considerable differences once we distinguish between victims, offenders, and victim-offenders and control for other variables. Perpetrators and victim-perpetrators were more likely to live with a nonspouse partner; feel isolated; display negative temperaments; and report substance use problems. “Victims only” were more likely to live with children and have lower household incomes.

The victim-offender overlap exists for IPV across a variety of measures. Though perpetrators and victim-perpetrators have similar characteristics, those who are victims only appear distinctly different. We discuss the implications for theory, policy, and research.

This study examined the effects of adolescent gang membership on educational attainment over a 12-year period. A broader conceptualization of gang membership—as a snare in the life course—is used to study its noncriminal consequences.

Data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 and propensity score matching were used to assess the cumulative and longitudinal effects of gang membership on seven educational outcomes, including educational attainment in years and six educational milestones. After adjusting for nonrandom selection into gangs, youths who joined a gang were compared annually to their matched counterparts from 1998 to 2009.

Selection-adjusted estimates revealed disparities between gang and nongang youth in education attainment. Youth who joined gangs were 30 percent less likely to graduate from high school and 58 percent less likely to earn a four-year degree than their matched counterparts. The effects of gang membership on educational attainment were statistically observable within one year of joining, and accumulated in magnitude over time to reach −0.62 years (ES=0.25) by the final point of observation.

The snare-like forces linked to the onset of gang membership have consequences that spill into a range of life domains, including education. These findings take on added significance because of a historical context where education has a prominent role in social stratification.

To examine the social ecology of homicide in Toronto, Canada.

Using both ordinary least squares regression and negative binomial models, we analyze the structural correlates of 965 homicides occurring in 140 neighborhoods in Toronto between 1988 and 2003.

Similar to research in U.S. cities, Toronto neighborhoods with higher levels of economic disadvantage, higher proportions of young and Black residents, and greater residential instability have higher homicide rates. In contrast to U.S. studies, Toronto neighborhoods with higher proportions of residents who are recent immigrants also have higher homicide rates. In multivariate models, only two of these characteristics—economic disadvantage and the proportion of residents aged 15 to 24—are significantly associated with homicide in Toronto’s neighborhoods. Despite low levels of both lethal violence and spatial inequality in Toronto, the correlates of homicide in its neighborhoods are similar in some respects to those in U.S. cities.

Our findings lend support to the notion of invariance in some ecological covariates of homicide but also highlight the need to be cautious about generalizing from U.S.-based research on the relationship between immigration and homicide.

Apply computational agent-based modeling to explore the generative sufficiency of several mechanisms derived from the field of environmental criminology in explaining commonly observed patterns of interpersonal victimization.

Controlled simulation experiments compared patterns of simulated interpersonal victimization to three empirically derived regularities of crime using established statistical techniques: (1) spatial clustering (nearest neighbor index), (2) repeat victimization (Gini coefficient), and (3) journeys to crime (Pearson’s coefficient of skewness).

Large, statistically significant increases in spatial clustering, repeat victimization, and journey to crime skewness are observed when virtual offenders operate according to mechanisms proposed by the routine activity approach, rational choice perspective, and geometry/pattern theories of crime.

This research provides support for several propositions of environmental criminology in explaining why interpersonal victimization tends to be spatially concentrated, experienced by a small number of repeat victims, and why aggregate journey to crime curves tend to follow a distance decay relationship. By extending previous work in agent-based modeling of property victimization, it also demonstrates that the same core mechanisms are sufficient to generate plausible patterns of crime when examining fundamentally different types of offending.