Gender, Low Self-Control, and Violent Victimization

Abstract

Prior research demonstrates that men generally experience higher levels of violent victimization relative to women. Using a high-risk sample of jail inmates, the present study draws on the core ideas from the self-control and societal norms toward the treatment of women literatures to examine the main and interactive effects of gender and self-control on violent victimization. Results indicate that gender and self-control both exhibit main effects on violent victimization net of control variables and that gender and self-control interact such that the gender gap in violent victimization disappears among men and women with low levels of self-control. We discuss the implications of our findings for theory, policy, and future research.

Notes

¹ Administrators from two jails agreed to allow the research team to administer surveys for one day only, which limited the number of participants from these facilities. The size of these two jails (1,672 and 1,019 inmates) was roughly similar to the average across all jails (n = 1,700 inmates).

² We also estimated models using two dummy variables to represent current gang members and ex-gang members (relative to non-gang members) and the results were substantively identical.

³ Given arguments for centering continuous variables involved in statistical interactions (e.g., see West et al. 1996), Models 2 and 3 were estimated with self-control standardized (and the interaction term in Model 3 was calculated from the standardized self-control measure). Although self-control captures one’s propensity to commit crime, we also estimated these empirical models controlling for a variety index of offending (results available on request). Importantly, the interaction term between self-control and gender highlighted in Model 3 remains statistically significant and substantively meaningful (p < .05).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jeffrey T. Ward

JEFFREY T. WARD is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at the University of Texas at San Antonio. His research interests include developmental and life-course criminology, sanction effects, gangs, and quantitative methodology. His work has appeared in Crime & Delinquency, Criminal Justice and Behavior, Criminology, and Journal of Criminal Justice.

Kathleen A. Fox

KATHLEEN A. FOX is an Assistant Professor in the School of Criminology & Criminal Justice at Arizona State University. She earned her Ph.D. in Criminology, Law & Society from the University of Florida. Her research focuses primarily on crime victimization, including theoretical tests, the gang–victimization link, and the effects of victimization on fear of crime and protective behavior. Her work has recently appeared in Criminology, Justice Quarterly, and Criminal Justice and Behavior.

Marie Skubak Tillyer

MARIE SKUBAK TILLYER is an Associate Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Her research interests include victimization, crime prevention, and violence. Previous research has appeared in Criminology, Crime and Delinquency, Criminal Justice and Behavior, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, Journal of Criminal Justice, Journal of Interpersonal Violence, and Justice Quarterly.

Jodi Lane

JODI LANE is Professor of Criminology, Law and Society in the Department of Sociology and Criminology & Law at the University of Florida. She earned her Ph.D. at the University of California, Irvine and previously worked at RAND Corporation. Her research interests include fear of crime, juvenile justice, corrections, crime policy, and program evaluation. Her work recently appeared in Justice Quarterly, Criminal Justice and Behavior, and Crime & Delinquency.