Age, Criminal Victimization, and Offending: Changing Relationships from Adolescence to Middle Adulthood

• NCJ Number: 240355
• Journal: Victims and Offenders Volume: 7 Issue: 3 Dated: July - September 2012 Pages: 227-254
• Author(s): Scott Menard
• Date Published: July 2012
• Length: 28 pages
• Grant Number(s): AA11949; DA015983
• Sponsoring Agency: US Dept of Health and Human Services; National Institute on Drug Abuse; Crime Victims' Institute; Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR)
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Research (Applied/Empirical)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This study examined the relationship between victimization and offending.

Abstract

The finding that victims and offenders are often the same individuals has led to attempts at explaining the positive correlation between victimization and offending. Much of the evidence for the positive relationship between victimization and offending, however, is based on samples of adolescents and young adults or on data with other limitations. In the present study, the author used longitudinal self-report data on victimization and offending in a national probability sample to examine the impacts of victimization on offending and offending on victimization, controlling for sociodemographic and theoretical predictors of both, to see whether the relationship is consistent across the life course from adolescence to early middle age. The results suggest that the relationship between being a perpetrator and being a victim of crime changes over the life course, and that explanations for the victimization-offending relationship need to take this life course variation into account. Abstract published by arrangement with Taylor and Francis.