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

Abstract

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.