Janet L. Lauritsen

Deviant Lifestyles, Proximity to Crime, and the Offender-Victim Link in Personal Violence:

This article assesses the theoretical and empirical status of offense activity and proximity to offending for explaining personal victimization. Our theoretical approach to the often-neglected linkage between offending and victimization is derived from recent revisions of lifestyle-routine activity theory (Jensen and Brownfield 1986; Garofalo 1987). Analyses of two national surveys of victimization in England and Wales suggest that offense activity—whether violent or minor deviance (e.g., drinking or drug use)—directly increases the risk of personal victimization. Moreover, ecological proximity to violence has positive effects on personal victimization, regardless of individual-level offense patterns. These results are generally replicated across time, across type of victimization (e.g., stranger vs. acquaintance-crime), and are independent of major demographic and individual-level correlates of victimization. Consequently, the data support the hypothesis that general deviance and violent offense activity may be considered a type of lifestyle that increases victimization risk, and that the structural constraint of residential proximity to crime has an effect on victimization that is unmediated by lifestyle and individual-level demographic factors. Our research therefore demonstrates that three broad factors—violent offending, deviant lifestyles, and ecological proximity to crime and violence—are deserving of further consideration in theoretical and empirical accounts of personal victimization.

Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Crime and Criminal Justice in the United States

Although racial discrimination emerges some of the time at some stages of criminal justice processing-such as juvenile justice-there is little evidence that racial disparities result from systematic, overt bias. Discrimination appears to be indirect, stemming from the amplification of initial disadvantages over time, along with the social construction of moral panics and associated political responses. The drug war of the 1980s and 1990s exacerbated the disproportionate representation of blacks in state and federal prisons. Race and ethnic disparities in violent offending and victimization are pronounced and long-standing. Blacks, and to a lesser extent Hispanics, suffer much higher rates of robbery and homicide victimization than do whites. Homicide is the leading cause of death among young black males and females. These differences result in part from social forces that ecologically concentrate race with poverty and other social dislocations. Useful research would emphasize multilevel (contextual) designs, the idea of cumulative disadvantage over the life course, the need for multiracial conceptualizations, and comparative, cross-national designs.

Conventional and delinquent activities: Implications for the prevention of violent victimization among adolescents

While age is one of the most important correlates of an individual’s risk of violent victimization, research regarding the victimization of adolescents is relatively meager. Using two well-known national data sources and an analytical framework guided by lifestyle/routine activities theories, we describe the relationships between activity involvement and the risk of assault and robbery victimization among adolescents in the United States. Several findings relevant to victimization prevention emerge. First, we find that certain adolescent activities are related to risk of violence. Youth who engage in delinquent activities experience the highest risk of assault and robbery victimization. Second, we find very few conventional activities which protect adolescents from victimization net of background factors (e.g., gender, race, family structure) or offending levels. We discuss the implications of these findings for programs directed at reducing violent victimization among adolescents and for lifestyle/routine activities theories of victimization.

Violent criminal behavior over the life course: A review of the longitudinal and comparative research

In this paper we review the existing longitudinal research on violent criminal behavior. Although interested in comparative research on this topic, we found that virtually all of the longitudinal studies comprised individuals from Western societies. The primary issue we examine concerns the extent to which there are universal patterns of violent behavior over the life course. Based on the available evidence, our best guess is that universal patterns do not exist It cannot be answered definitively, however, to what extent sociocultural variations in violence reflect differences in opportunity structures or differences in developmental trajectories and transitions over the life course. In order to address these issues, specific recommendations for future research, both within countries and cross-nationally, are presented and discussed.

The Devil Is in the Details: Crime and Victimization Research with the National Crime Victimization Survey

In this essay I discuss some of my research experiences with the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). Having used the data for more than 15 years to conduct various types of analyses, I have learned that the more I use the data, the more questions I have, not just about the various methodological properties of the NCVS, but about other survey data sets that serve as the foundation for a good deal of criminological research. Much of what we currently know about the factors associated with crime and victimization is based on these types of social surveys, and the methodological features of any data set can have important effects on the substantive patterns uncovered in the data.