Victimization as a cause of delinquency: The role of depression and gender
Abstract
Victimization as a correlate of delinquency has been largely neglected in the criminological literature, despite research on Agnew's general strain theory (GST) suggesting that victimization is a type of strain likely to cause delinquency (Agnew, 2002). This study examined the role of depression and gender as potentially indispensable mechanisms in the victimization-delinquency relationship. Findings indicated that victimization has a positive effect on both delinquency and depression, and consistent with a GST explanation, the connection between victimization and delinquency is most pronounced for males with trait depression. This study added to the GST literature by distinguishing between trait and state emotion and by delineating GST predictions regarding each emotional form.
Introduction
While studies have shown a clear empirical link between criminal behavior and victimization (Esbenson and Huizinga, 1991, Fagan et al., 1987), there is relatively little focus in the criminological literature on victimization as a cause of crime. Much of the victimization research has highlighted the homogeneity of offender and victim characteristics and suggested that victims and offenders may not represent two truly distinct groups (Sampson and Lauritsen, 1990, Singer, 1981, Wolfgang, 1958). The literature examining a potentially causal relationship between offending and victimization has tended to approach criminal behavior as an antecedent to victimization (see Lauritsen et al., 1991, Mustaine and Tewksbury, 1998, Nofziger and Kurtz, 2005, Sampson and Lauritsen, 1990). In recent years, however, a small literature has begun to explicitly examine the effect of victimization on offending using Agnew's general strain theory (GST) and found a positive effect (Hay and Evans, 2006, Moon et al., 2008, Ostrowsky and Messner, 2005, Piquero and Sealock, 2004, Spano et al., 2006). This study added to the GST literature by testing the extent to which victimization increases delinquency among a sample of juveniles. It further explored the role of depression and gender in the GST process by distinguishing between state and trait depression, outlining GST predictions for each, and testing for effects separately by gender.
Section snippets
Victimization and delinquency
Empirical evidence has established that individuals engaging in criminal behavior are at a higher risk of victimization (Esbenson and Huizinga, 1991, Lauritsen et al., 1991, Paetsch and Bertrand, 1999). Conventional explanation of this link has been through routine activities theory. Individuals engaging in criminal behavior are more likely to be perceived as suitable targets and find themselves in environments lacking capable guardians and are therefore more likely to be victimized (Cohen and
Victimization, depression, and delinquency
Previous tests of GST have focused on anger as the primary negative emotion in the causal mechanism because anger tends to energize the individual and reduce inhibitions, and because anger has been linked to delinquency (Agnew, 1985, Broidy, 2001, Mazerolle and Piquero, 1997). For example, in an exploration of victimization, anger, and GST, Hay and Evans (2006) found that victimization significantly increased the likelihood of delinquency, and this relationship was partially mediated by anger.
Delinquency, depression, and gender
Research has long shown gender differences in both offending (Daly and Chesney-Lind, 1988, Steffensmeier and Allan, 1995) and the experience of depression (Compas and Hammen, 1994, Culbertson, 1997, Gjerde et al., 1988). An accurate examination of depression's role in the relationship between victimization and delinquency must therefore consider gender. The original GST model (Agnew, 1992) did not explicitly address gender differences in crime, yet Broidy and Agnew (1997) have presented three
Sample
Data from the National Youth Survey (NYS), a multistage probability sample of U.S. households, were used to test the hypotheses. The first wave of the NYS included 1,725 youth ages eleven to seventeen. Data from the fifth and sixth waves of the NYS, which were conducted in 1981 and 1984 and measured behavior occurring in 1980 and 1983, were used because these were the first waves that asked questions about both depression and victimization. In 1980, the survey participants ranged in age from
Descriptive statistics
Table 1 presents the means, standard deviations, and alphas for the independent variables in the full sample. As seen in this table, the majority of respondents did not experience symptoms of depression. About 75 percent of respondents reported not having a period of two weeks or more in which they experienced depressive symptoms (1,003 out of 1,332). Out of those who did report depressive feelings, the mean on the depression scale was 3.4 with a standard deviation of 2.6. Most respondents also
Discussion
This study tested the power of Agnew's general strain theory to explain the empirical link between victimization, depression, and delinquency. Using two waves of the National Youth Survey, these analyses explored the relationship between victimization and delinquency, the extent to which trait depression both mediated and moderated that relationship, and how the role of depression differed by gender. As expected, findings indicated that victimization has a positive effect on later depression
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