A Safe Place to Grow Up? Trajectories of Adolescent Violent Victimization Across Neighborhood Types

• In Event: Neighborhoods and Violent Victimization

Abstract

Violent victimization is disproportionately concentrated among youth, with numerous negative consequences, including increased risks of subsequent victimization. Although criminologists have begun exploring victim continuity over the adolescent and young adult life course, less work recognizes that victimization trajectories do not develop in a vacuum; rather, they unfold within a system of interacting contexts. Particularly important are neighborhood contexts, which shape the risks to which adolescents are exposed. Utilizing life course theory, this study explores victimization as a developmental process unfolding differently across “types” of neighborhoods. Conceptualizing neighborhoods as types better facilitates comparisons and corresponds with the detailed portraits of neighborhoods (e.g., as dangerous vs. safe) emerging from ethnographic treatments of place. Using four waves of survey data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health), contextual/composition information, and gender-stratified three-level growth models, this study examines how direct (experienced) and indirect (witnessed) violent victimization trajectories unfold during adolescence, if they do so differently across different neighborhood types (measured via latent class analysis), and whether such differences are explained by key risk/ protective factors (e.g., low self-control, parental monitoring, peer delinquency).

Author

• Tara Warner, University of Nebraska - Lincoln