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Juvenile victimization can take many forms, and research has documented that victimization during childhood is connected with negative long-term patterns in criminal activity, health, and prospects for the future. Research on victimization patterns began in earnest during the 1970s, with the advent of the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). Although the victimization of youth is a topic of considerable importance and interest to the scientific community, less is known about young victims of crime either because large-scale data collections, such as the NCVS, refrain from collecting data from this group or else information is only available from official sources. Nevertheless, a sizable scholarly literature has developed in order to better understand the causes, extent, and consequences of juvenile victimization, whether in the family or outside the family.

In recent years, research has begun to offer a much clearer picture about juvenile victimization, finding that many forms of victimization among youth are concentrated among researchers have begun to build theories to account for patterns of juvenile victimization as well as to evaluate programs designed to prevent youth from becoming victims.

Extent Of Juvenile Victimization

The main source of our knowledge about victimization patterns comes from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), which collects data from a representative sample of Americans age 12 or older. Although the NCVS is the largest source of data on victimization, there are important limits with respect to understanding juvenile victimization. First, the focus of the NCVS is on street crimes (such as assaults, thefts), and so information on child maltreatment is therefore lacking. Second, although street crime victimization data is available for teenagers, younger children are excluded. Because of this omission, relevant information about those crimes and groups must come from alternative and more limited data sources. This research paper will turn to these sources of information later.

With these limitations in mind, the National Crime Victimization Survey generally shows that violent victimization is most highly concentrated among those aged 24 or younger. This pattern has held true since the advent of the NCVS in 1973. From 1973 well into the 1980s, the violent victimization of youth was at a fairly stable and relatively high plateau, with rates of victimization ranging from 75 to as much as 100 incidents per 1,000 people each year. Starting in the late 1980s, however, violent victimization began to trend significantly upward. In 1994, the annual rate peaked at 125 per 1,000 individuals and then began a precipitous decline that has continued through the most recent year for which there is data. In 2009, the rate of violent victimization for youths aged 12–19 had fallen to less than 37 per 1,000. Juvenile violent victimization is thus presently at its lowest recorded levels. Of the violent crimes, simple assaults were the most likely to occur among juveniles. Property crime victimization, however, was substantially more frequent among juveniles than violence. Juveniles (age 12–19) who were classified as “heads of households,” reported a property victimization rate of 268 per 1,000 in 2008, which was the highest rate of any age-group by a considerable margin. Most of these victimizations were thefts. In short, while juveniles have the highest risk of victimization for any age-group, most youths will not become victims and of those that do the most likely victimization will take the form of a theft.

The NCVS does not collect data on murder victims, but juveniles are sometimes the victims of homicides. The Supplemental Homicide Report (SHR) is the key source of data, and the SHR records the age of those who die in a criminal attack no matter how young. The data show that juveniles have rates of homicide victimization that are relatively low compared to other age-groups. Since 1975, children who were 13 or younger have consistently had the lowest murder rate of any age-group (an annual rate of approximately 1–2 per 100,000 between 1975 and 2005), even when contrasted with rates for the elderly. Youths aged between 14 and 17 had somewhat higher rates (less than five incidents per 100,000 people in 2005), but these rates were generally comparable to middle-aged adults. These older juveniles, however, have shown more fluctuation in their homicide victimization pattern over the years. Starting in the late 1980s and through the mid-1990s, their homicide victimization rates jumped to 12 per 100,000. This bulge was only mirrored in the 18–24 age-group (the group with consistently the highest rate of murder victimization); all the remaining age-groups generally reported stable levels of homicide victimization during this period.

Although the NCVS shows that violent victimizations are rare, even among the young, youth may also be exposed to child maltreatment. Child maltreatment, as generally understood, encompasses the sexual and physical abuse of minors as well as neglect. Beyond this, however, there is no consensus about what these terms exactly mean, and states have accordingly established differing criteria as to what constitutes maltreatment. As a result, precise estimates of how many children are maltreated, and developing a profile of who they are, are somewhat problematic tasks. The two major sources of child abuse and neglect data are the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS) and the National Incidence Study (NIS). Unlike the NCVS, NCANDS does not collect relevant data directly from the youth but rather from state Child Protective Services (CPS) records. Because of this, unreported maltreatment or those that in fact occur and that CPS cannot substantiate are not reflected in the data. According to 2009 data, approximately 64 % of allegations made to CPS were found to be unsubstantiated. The NIS goes beyond CPS and surveys community professionals who have contact with children, but this is not an annual survey.

The NCANDS data, since 2005, shows that child victimization rates are low and fairly stable over time. In 2005, the victimization rate for children age 17 or younger was 12 confirmed incidents of maltreatment per 1,000 juveniles, or only 1.2 %. The prevalence rate that year, which is the number of children victimized at least once, was 10.9 per 1,000. Each year since 2005, the child victimization rate has declined slightly. By 2009, the victimization rate was ten per 1,000, with the prevalence rate being less than 1%. The children most likely to be reported as victims of child maltreatment tended to be less than 3 years old and most of these were less than a year old. Juveniles least likely to be substantiated as victims of maltreatment typically are older (for instance, 16–17 years old). These substantiated cases were almost equally divided between boys (48.2 %) and girls (51.1 %; the remainder were “unknown”). White children comprised 44 % of victims of child maltreatment, followed by African-Americans (22 %) and Hispanic (21 %). African-Americans, however, had the highest rate of victimization. Neglect figured in more than three-quarters of all cases reported in the NCANDS data, with physical abuse (17.8 %) being the next most common form of child victimization. These patterns have remained generally stable since 2005.

Although substantiated allegations child abuse and neglect, according to these estimates, is statistically rare, a large amount of research has examined the predictors of maltreatment. Research has located consistent risk factors for maltreatment since research on the topic began in earnest in the 1960s. These risk factors appear to be correlated with one another; that is to say, the presence of one risk factor is likely to be accompanied by one or more additional predictors. Research has shown that families where the parents are isolated from stable social support networks tend to have higher incidences of abuse victimization. Likewise, abuse is more prevalent among those families living in poverty. Theorists have speculated that impoverished families are less able to properly allocate financial resources, which create stress within the family. Abuse appears to be more concentrated among racial/ethnic minorities, particularly African-American households. This pattern likely arises from the fact that racial minorities are often ranked lower on the economic ladder, and they tend to live in severely disadvantaged areas where social support structures for families are very weak. Parents who themselves have problems with alcohol and drug addiction, or mental health issues, are more likely to mistreat their children.

Consequences Of Victimization For Juveniles

Apart from estimating the extent of victimization among youth, scholars have also invested some attention on the effects of victimization. The life course approach develops the idea that quality of life over the years, including antisocial behavior, is largely (although not completely) shaped during childhood. Children acquire, during these years, the social capital needed to build their lives: education, experience with relationships, work, and so forth. The basic idea is that childhood victimization represents a life course event that can have long-term adverse effects on child development and adult outcomes. To the extent that victimization impairs the acquisition of social and personal capital, then it represents an important domain for research.

There is a considerable body of literature exploring the long-term effects of familial maltreatment on children, and the findings consistently show that children whose parents victimize them are more likely to experience adverse effects going forward. Abused children tend to:

Experience delays in physical development
Show higher levels of antisocial behavior
Have lower self-esteem
Have lower levels of academic achievement
Experience symptoms of depression, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and anxiety

Beginning in the 1960s, scholars discussing the long-term effects of physical victimization of children spoke of the “cycle of violence.” The cycle of violence can refer to two phenomena. First, abused children may, when they become parents, turn toward abusing their own children. Second, abused children may have offense repertoires that are characterized by higher levels of violence. Considerable research shows that abused children have a greater probability of engaging in violent and sexual offending in adulthood. Although the cycle of violence as an idea is well ensconced in the child abuse field and among policy-makers and advocates, the research suggests some caution. Such experts as Cathy Spatz Widom found that most physically maltreated children did not get arrested, whether as juveniles or adults. Children who were maltreated did tend to have a greater probability of arrest than other children, but arrests were for a range of crimes – sometimes violent but often not. Or, put another way, physical abuse increased the risk of arrest for not only violence but also nonviolent crime.

The literature is less large with respect to victimization’s effects on children more generally; however, there do appear to be similar patterns to those reported in the child abuse literature. For instance, child victims of nonfamilial violence and sexual assault are more likely to experience PTSD and feelings of distress and depression. These feelings, as with abuse victimization, appear to persist into adulthood. Other long-term effects include stunted educational and socioeconomic consequences. Adolescents who were victimized were less apt to have a record of quality educational achievement. This, in turn, undermined work-related accomplishments and occupational status. Victimized children also have a greater probability of offending as well. In short, research indicates that many of the problems experienced by abused children are evident among those children who are victimized by those outside the family. In both cases, maltreatment and victimization among juveniles were more likely to result in a degraded quality of life as adults.

Victimization In School

Youth spend a considerable amount of their waking hours at school, and it therefore follows that school may be a context in which victimization frequently takes place. Victimization at school can take many forms – street crimes but also harassment and bullying. For different reasons, the topic of school crime has drawn great interest from parents, policy-makers, and students. Students who are victims of crime often have a more difficult time meeting the academic and social expectations of school life, such students can drop out of school, which can have adverse long-term effects on higher education and employment prospects. In turn, struggling students could endanger the existence of the school itself, as such programs as No Child Left Behind can mandate the closure of schools that repeatedly fail to make progress toward meeting educational benchmarks for reading and math.

Since 1992, the National Crime Victimization Survey has reported victimization incidents that occurred on school grounds. That year, the rate of theft victimization per 1,000 students was 95; the corresponding rate for violent victimizations was 48 (“serious violence” had a rate of only ten per 1,000 students). The level of victimization for all types of crime has decreased dramatically since the early to mid-1990s, particularly for theft victimizations. As of 2008, both theft and violent victimization rates were 24 per 1,000 individuals (serious violence at only four per 1,000). A comparison of the overall rates of victimization across the years suggests that school is an unsafe place for juveniles. In 1992, for example, the combined rate of victimization was 138 per 1,000 (compared to 144 per 1,000 at school). By 2008, schools still had a higher rate of victimization for juveniles than elsewhere (47 per 1,000 at school, versus 38 per 1,000 away from school). These numbers are somewhat misleading, at least by the metric of safety. Most of these victimizations are thefts. Rates of victimization in 2008 for “at school” and “away from school” are also tiny, especially when compared to what they were 15 years previous. Most importantly, however, serious violent victimization is more likely to occur away from school (rate of eight per 1,000) than at school (four per 1,000). This pattern is reflected in other data sources. For instance, National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) data shows that during the school week violent offending committed by juveniles (and, presumably, violent victimization) peaks at approximately 3 pm, which is around the time when students are dismissed from school and are unsupervised. Although a considerable amount of victimization takes place at school, its levels are small and the most serious forms of violent victimization are most likely to transpire, not at school, but rather on nearby playgrounds and en route home from school.

Information on bullying is considerably scantier. Some research indicates that bullying affects a relatively small portion of students (less than 15% are either perpetrators or victims of bullying). Estimating the extent of bullying is somewhat difficult. Aggressive behavior calculated to intimidate or harass someone, such as by threatening them or calling them names, is commonly included as part of the definition of bullying. Some scholars, however, include passive-aggressive behaviors that the bullying victim might not even be aware of – where bullies ostracize disliked peers or spread rumors and gossip. Many of the long-term consequences of bullying victimization resemble those for victimization and child maltreatment, such as degraded educational achievements and depression.

Of particular concern, however, are school shootings. For instance, in a 2001 Gallup survey administered at a time when the Columbine and Jonesboro school massacres were a fresh memory in the minds of the public, 70 % of parents felt that a shooting was “likely” at their school. While school shootings garner much media attention, during 2008–2009 academic year there were only 15 homicides that took place on a United States elementary or secondary school campus. This is contrasted with the approximately 1,700 homicides of youths age 5–18 over that same period. Homicide is itself a very rare event; however, when the murder of children does take place, they are extremely unlikely to occur at school. The rate of homicide at school amounts to approximately one youth each year per 2.5 million students. Since 1992, the number of school homicide victimizations has held fairly steady between 14 and 34 per year, with recent years tending toward the lower boundary of that range.

What sort of student is most likely to fall victim at school? The findings are clear that victimization at school, although unlikely to befall any given student during a single year, is not a random occurrence; if it was, then everyone would share equal risk. Researchers have examined the correlates for school victimization, and findings have begun to emerge implicating a combination of factors, such as particular aspects of the community where the school resides, the school context, and the students themselves. Given that much victimization occurs off school grounds after children are dismissed, the quality of the neighborhood plays a significant role in promoting the risk of victimization. The most important school-related risk factor for victimization appears to be the concentration of offenders at the school, such as children who bring weapons or else gang activity. The most consistently salient contributor toward youthful victimization, however, seems to be factors connected with the individual student. Students who bring weapons to school, who resent school and feel isolated, and who have friends who are delinquent are more likely to experience victimization.

Research on the effectiveness of school security strategies – guards, metal detectors, corporal punishment – have generally produced unimpressive results, especially after controlling for the other known correlates of youthful victimization. This is likely because many school preventative strategies are irrelevant to when and where victimization actually occurs. The presence of a school resource officer and locked school doors has little to do with theft, which is the most common type of victimization at school. Rather, these strategies are most clearly targeted toward preventing violence; however, research has yet to demonstrate a significant beneficial effect even for reducing the occasional and usually low-level scuffling that occurs during the school day. Since serious forms of victimization are most likely to happen after final dismissal from school, then the usefulness of guards and metal detectors is neutralized. Research has even shown that students where there are invasive forms of security do not feel any safer and are somewhat more likely to be afraid. Nevertheless, numerous other factors are much more strongly connected with higher levels of fear – for instance, experiencing victimization and observing criminal activity while at school.

Explanations Of Nonfamilial Juvenile Victimization

Given these patterns of juvenile victimization, it is clear that victims possess distinct characteristics that somehow increase their risk. Victimization researchers have, over the past several decades, developed several important theories in an effort to explain why some people fall victim while others do not. The most long-standing theoretical tradition in victimization work is the routine activities/lifestyles approach. Lawrence Cohen and Marcus Felson, Michael Hindelang, Michael Gottfredson, and James Garofalo were the creators of this approach. Over the following years, other theorists would offer additional perspectives on victimization that included social-psychological or cultural risk factors. Recently, building on studies that show that offenders and victims share demographic characteristics and profiles, researchers have even applied criminological theories to account for victimization risk. Note that these theories are organized to explain nonfamilial forms of victimization; the risk factors for child maltreatment were presented earlier.

Lifestyles-Routine Activities Theory. The lifestyles/routine activities (lifestyles/RAT) approach is a long-standing theoretical tradition in victimization research and was the first victimization explanation to be widely accepted and researched. The approach argues that for victimization to occur, a given situation or context must have a combination of (1) a likely offender, (2) a worthwhile target, and (3) ineffective guardianship. Circumstances where these three factors are present will have the highest incidence of victimization. Other, relatively more recent, scholarship has identified the qualities of routine activities or lifestyles that ought to be predictive of victimization: that those who engage in unsupervised and unstructured social activity with peers will have a higher risk. Such activities would include hanging out with friends and going to parties, activities that are often characteristic of youth.

In the late 1970s through the mid-1980s, research was primarily concerned with the demographic correlates of victimization such as those mention earlier. Starting in the 1980s and continuing into the 1990s, research turned toward specific situations and activities that enhanced the probability of victimization. For instance, researchers noted that self-reported offending was highly correlated with victimization among not only adults but youth as well. In other words, offenders tend to also be victims. The lifestyles/ RAT approach accounted for this by claiming that those who engaged in a deviant lifestyle were more likely to spend time with those who commit crime, the very people who would not scruple at victimizing their own peers (thus implying proximity to motivated offenders). Not all juvenile victims are also deviants, but studies show that there is considerable overlap between offending and victimization. Note that the child maltreatment and child victimization literatures point to offending as a byproduct of victimization, thus offering their own somewhat differing accounts of the victim-offender overlaps.

Self-Control Theory. Michael Gottfredson and Travis Hirschi’s self-control theory suggests that a person’s ability to focus on long-term consequences of behavior, as opposed to short-term solutions to problems, explains conformity. People with low self-control, in contrast, make self-centered decisions that address short-term problems that fail to consider the long-term consequences of those decisions. One can understand how much self-control a juvenile has by identifying actions that consistently speak to ignoring long-term risk, such as acting angrily, impulsively, in flagrant disregard for risk, and selfishly. Such actions also elevate the risk of victimization as well. Children who are aggressive toward others may be attacked and beaten. Impulsive behavior can result in greater vulnerability. Selfish behavior can ruin friendships that have the potential to become strong, and thereby weaken guardianship potential. In this respect, victimization is not something that those low in self-control voluntarily seek out; however, their decisions place them at greater risk than would otherwise be the case. Research so far shows that those with low self-control are more likely to become victims of all manner of crime.

The theory asserts that through childhood differences in self-control tend to be unstable; younger children, in particular, are going to have great difficulty in being able to act consistently with self-restraint. In this respect, low self-control may not offer much of an account for early childhood maltreatment because low self-control is assumed to be universal in that population. Indeed, Gottfredson and Hirschi attributed childhood maltreatment to parents who were poorly equipped to teach their children self-control. Once children can be reliably rank-ordered in terms of their self-control, however, then the theory can offer a plausible account of why some individuals become victims.

Social Interationist Theory. Richard Felson introduced the “social interactionist” (or SI) theory to explain violent victimization. The main argument of the theory is that victimization occurs as a result of interplay between two or more individuals involved in social exchange. The basic process begins with a person who has experienced a negative event and who is consequently feeling emotionally down. The emotional response of the stressed individuals is usually to become short-tempered, irritated, or angry. These behaviors elicit backlash from those around the individual who, rather than take pity on the stressed person, become annoyed or angry themselves. As a consequence, the other person in the interaction will have a grievance, which may provoke physical attack if the distressed person is unable or unwilling to make satisfaction (e.g., apologize). This social interaction produces a cycle of retaliation and counter-retaliation that is hard to stop. A few major studies have tested the tenets of the theory to explain victimization. Richard Felson examined the role of negative events as predictors of victimization, finding that they indeed made victimization more likely to occur. Later work has connected negative affect or emotions with significantly elevated victimization risk among youth.

This particular framework is of particular relevance to those interested in juvenile victimization insofar as early maltreatment and victimization appear to produce the emotional distress that is implicated in this theory. That is, childhood victimization (familial or nonfamilial) results in emotional disorders and worsened performance at a variety of tasks. These circumstances, according to SI, would create the grievances that might provoke attack.

Subcultures of Violence Theories. For many years, researchers have studied how subcultural norms of violence are connected with victimization. These subcultures of violence place value on acting tough and retaliating when disrespected. Inherently, this creates a cycle where victims retaliate and become offenders against the initial offenders (who now become the victims). Therefore, the subculture is characterized by individuals who alternate roles as offenders and victims. In fact, this literature has consistently found that violent offenders living in areas where norms of violence predominate experienced high rates of victimization.

More recently, scientific research has begun to directly test the influence of subcultural norms. Elijah Anderson, for instance, introduced an influential theory of offending in his book Code of the Street, an ethnographic study of African-Americans in disadvantaged neighborhoods in Philadelphia. The street code is a system of rules governing the use of violence to informally address grievances. These codes are adopted by many individuals in disadvantaged communities, and even if they are not ascribed to by all, they are known by almost everyone living in that area. Here, the individual has a system of beliefs that allow him or her to become physically violent toward others in situations where social control is perceived as necessary. These beliefs are seen as a way to obtain respect among peers and in the community as a whole. The reputation gained through adhering to these codes provides protection against violence. These codes also allow for functional recourse against violations against the individual. Unlike their counterparts outside disadvantaged communities, who can use the police and the courts as allies, individuals in communities marked by street codes rely on violence. Put another way, having a reputation for violence enhances “respect,” which in turn deters would-be offenders (who would thus risk their lives by trying a person who has “respect”).

Contrary to Anderson’s assertion that the code of the street protects individuals from harm, research has shown that African-American youth who reported having attitudes favorable to the use of violence, in fact, had a greater risk of experiencing violent victimization. A system of beliefs that espoused violence and retaliation, rather than being protective, was correlated with more violent victimization. Similar conclusions have been drawn from studies on youth gangs. Although many youth join together to form delinquent gangs for protection, research has shown that gangs, in fact, increase the likelihood that a person will experience violent victimization. In short, victims of violence often have profiles similar to offenders when it comes to attitudes toward violence; both tend to show support for violence as a mechanism for addressing disrespect and physical injury.

Conclusion

Juvenile victimization is a topic of concern, but it is nevertheless perplexing. On the one hand, there are the occasional horrific accounts of youthful victimization reported in the media, which in turn creates a demand for a response from government authorities. This has resulted in considerable investment in school security, for instance. Research consistently shows that the effects of victimization upon youth appear connected with unfortunate decisions and outcomes later in life. Children victimized in school and maltreated at home are more likely to quit school, have a lower income than everyone else, and suffer employment and legal problems throughout their lives. From this perspective, any effort to protect children, no matter how expensive or invasive, would appear to be warranted.

On the other hand, victimization is an exceedingly rare occurrence even for children. Youth who become victims are most likely to have been targets of theft. The percentage of children who have been maltreated at home, who have been violently attacked elsewhere, and who have directly experienced bullying at school is very small. When violence happens, the incident itself tends to be not very serious in terms of immediate effects; however, research indicates that there are many adverse long-term effects that degrade a youthful victim’s quality of life as an adult. Levels of victimization are slightly higher at school than outside of school, but this paints a somewhat misleading picture. Much of the victimization is in the form of theft and minor assaults. Serious violence is most likely to occur off of school grounds, where school security cannot offer any protection.

The research also indicates that many efforts intended to curtail the onslaught of youthful victimization are disconnected from the reality of where and when the victimization occurs and to whom. Increasing the safety of students is of course a laudable goal, but misallocating resources toward ineffective programs – and even policies that elevate student fear – undermine the efforts of society to produce children who can function independently as adults.

Research is still attempting to understand the reasons some youths fall victim and not others. There is a clear profile of the families that are most likely to mistreat their children. These theories have focused on the situations that juveniles often are in (and how they fuel victimization risk), their levels of self-control, degrees of emotional distress, and their attitudes toward violence. It is interesting to note that many theories of victimization highlight variables that are consequences of childhood maltreatment, which in turn are correlates of victimization in adolescence and adulthood.

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