RESEARCH ARTICLE


A Longitudinal Examination of the Relationship between Physical Aggression and Violent Victimization among Urban Minority Chicago Youth and Young Adults



Wesley G. Jennings*, 1, Kelli A. Komro2
1 University of South Florida, College of Behavioral and Community Sciences, Department of Criminology, 4202 E. Fowler Ave., SOC 326, Tampa, FL 33620, USA
2 University of Florida, College of Medicine, Department of Health Outcomes and Policy, and Institute for Child Health Policy, 1329 SW 16th St. Room 5130, PO Box 100177, Gainesville, FL 32610-0177, USA

Article Information


Identifiers and Pagination:

Year: 2011
Volume: 4
First Page: 68
Last Page: 73
Publisher Id: TOFAMSJ-4-68
DOI: 10.2174/1874922401104010068

Article History:

Received Date: 1/5/2011
Revision Received Date: 26/5/2011
Acceptance Date: 7/6/2011
Electronic publication date: 14/10/2011
Collection year: 2011

© 2011 Jennings and Komro;

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

* Address correspondence to this author at the College of Behavioral and Community Sciences, Department of Criminology, 4202 E. Fowler Ave., SOC 326, Tampa, FL 33620, USA; Tel: 813-974-8024; Fax: 813-974-2803; E-mail: jenningswgj@usf.edu


Abstract

Empirical evidence has been accumulating suggesting that victims and offenders share common risk factors and are often one and the same. Guided by this extant literature, this study provides a longitudinal examination of the relationship between physical aggression and violent victimization among a large sample of 2,671 urban minority youth and young adults from Chicago. The results from a series of bivariate probit regression models, which allow the equations for physical aggression and violent victimization to be estimated simultaneously, reveal strong evidence of a victimoffender overlap. Additional results suggest that this victim-offender overlap cannot be merely explained away by a commonality of risk factors and demographics alone. Study limitations and policy implications are also discussed.

Keywords: Physical aggression, victimization, victim-offender overlap.