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Abstract
The criminological literature presents substantial evidence that victims and offenders in violent crimes share demographic characteristics, engage in similar lifestyles and activities, and reside in socially disorganized neighborhoods. However, research has examined these relationships separately using either victimization or offending data, and prior studies have not examined these relationships by comparing victims and offenders within the same incidents. This limits the effect of examining whether these factors are associated with victimization and offending in similar or distinct ways. Using a law enforcement database of victims (n = 1,248) and offenders (n = 1,735) involved within the same aggravated battery incidents (n = 1,015) in Bernalillo County, New Mexico, this research explores whether victims and offenders involved in non‐lethal violence share certain individual, neighborhood and situational characteristics. Results suggest that victims and offenders live in socially disorganized neighborhoods and engage in risky lifestyles and violent offending behaviors in similar proportions. These findings highlight the overlapping factors associated with victimization and offending in non‐lethal violent personal crimes. The implications of these findings are discussed.
Acknowledgements
This research was funded by a Dissertation Grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia (R49/CCR622427‐01‐1). The contents of this document are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention. The authors would like to thank Deputy Chief Ruben Davalos, Curtis Cherne and Kathy Medrano from the Albuquerque Police Department for their assistance in obtaining the criminal justice data used in this study. From University Physicians Associates, we would like to thank Bindu Purushothaman, Percillia Ng and Tom Hoehn for their assistance with the healthcare data extraction. Finally, we would also like to thank John Roberts, Tim Wadsworth and the three anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this article.
Notes
[1] Population statistics based on US Census Bureau Data from the year 2000.
[2] The correlates of victimization and offending in household member violence are known to differ from the factors associated with violent victimization and offending outside of domestic/household member violence (Avakame, Citation1997). Therefore, we excluded incidents of household member violence from the analyses.
[3] In order to perform our linkage with other data sources in Bernalillo County, such as the crime history database and the hospital utilization records at UNM‐HSC, it was necessary to restrict the number of victims, offenders and incidents to a manageable number of cases. Therefore, for the purposes of this study, we only chose to focus on aggravated battery incidents during the calendar year of 2001.
[4] It is possible that some of these omitted arrests represent valid arrests not associated with the aggravated battery incident. However, we felt that excluding arrests records within seven days of the aggravated battery incident prevented the possibility of including the 2001 aggravated battery incident itself in the crime history records.
[5] Includes the following charges: homicide, aggravated assault, aggravated battery, domestic violence, child abuse and robbery.
[6] Includes the following charges: larceny, shoplifting, burglary and motor vehicle theft.
[7] Similar to the crime history variables, it was necessary to exclude visits within seven days of the aggravated battery incident to avoid the possibility of counting injuries or hospital visits resulting from the incident itself as part of the medical histories. Subsequently, these visits and any visits after the 2001 aggravated battery incident date were excluded from the analysis.
[8] We chose to compare victims and offenders based on their home residence for two reasons. First, it was impossible to examine the similarities and differences between victims and offenders using the neighborhood characteristics of where the incident occurred. Victims and offenders shared the same incident address/location in our database, and thus, there would be no variation between these two groups if we used the incident address. Second, to accurately test hypothesis 4, it was necessary to examine the overlap and divergence between victims and offenders based on their home addresses. The incident address reflects the characteristics of the neighborhood that attracted the victims and offenders and does not provide information on the ecological factors that shape similarities and differences between victims and offenders.
[9] The index has an alpha value of 0.90. Factor weights for each variable are include: Percentage of total population with less than an eighth grade education (.861); percentage of total population with no high school diploma (.909); percentage of total population living in poverty (.891); percentage of total population unemployed (.722); and average median family income (−.810).
[10] It should be noted that these incidents occurred in a residential setting, though not necessarily in the victims’ and/or offenders’ homes. Some examples of non‐residential incidents include such places as bars, hotels, streets and parking garages.
[11] A dyad incident is one in which there was only one offender and one victim. A non‐dyad incident is one in which there was multiple offenders and/or multiple victims.
