Opportunity theory and adolescent school-based victimization.
While school-based adolescent victimization has received a great deal of public attention, there exist relatively few theoretically driven studies aimed at explaining this phenomenon. We address this paucity by providing a test of a criminal-opportunity model of school-based victimization using data on over 3,000 students from 40 different Kentucky middle and high schools. The effects of opportunity-related concepts are estimated for both violent and property victimization, and comparisons are made for each victimization type across middle- and high-school student subsamples. Findings suggest that criminal opportunity theory is relevant to the understanding of school-based victimization. In particular, indicators of exposure to crime and target antagonism appear to be robust predictors. Further, there appears to be substantial generalizability in the effects of opportunity-related variables across violent versus property victimization as well as across middle-school versus high-school contexts.
Augustine
Michelle Campbell
MC
Department of Sociology, University of Kentucky, Lexington 40506-0027, USA. mdcamp@fuse.net
Wilcox
Pamela
P
Ousey
Graham C
GC
Clayton
Richard R
RR
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D003415:Crime / Q000517:prevention & control / Q000523:psychology / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D019548:Crime Victims / Q000523:psychology / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007629:Kentucky; D016015:Logistic Models; D008297:Male; D009042:Motivation; D011582:Psychological Theory; D012307:Risk Factors; D012574:Schools; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology*