Correlates of the victim–offender overlap based on daily conflict-Level data from digital diaries

• Author: Bruce G. Taylor,Elizabeth A. Mumford,Poulami Maitra
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00938548211073597
• Published date: 01 August 2022
• Date: 01 August 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND BEHAVIOR, 2022, Vol. 49, No. 8, August 2022, 1210 –1232.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/00938548211073597

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© 2022 International Association for Correctional and Forensic Psychology

1210

CORRELATES OF THE VICTIM–OFFENDER

OVERLAP BASED ON DAILY CONFLICT-LEVEL

DATA FROM DIGITAL DIARIES

BRUCE G. TAYLOR

ELIZABETH A. MUMFORD

POULAMI MAITRA

NORC at the University of Chicago

This study addresses the dearth of research in the victim–offender (V-O) overlap literature regarding the context in which

incident-level abuse occurs. With a national sample of 589 young adults (age 18–32), 9.2% reported 2,015 daily conflicts

(73% involving abuse) through digital diaries over a 6-week period. Using individual conflicts as our unit of analysis, we

estimated multilevel models to explore both the nature of the individual conflicts and the characteristics of the parties in the

conflict. We explored what distinguishes routine nonabusive conflicts from conflicts that involve abuse. We also examined

the predictors of abusive conflicts and the V-O overlap. The nature of the incidents and proximities of the parties to the

conflict were associated with the presence of abuse in conflicts and the V-O overlap. How young adults manage conflicts

played a role in whether the dispute escalated to include abusive behaviors, especially mutual abuse.

Keywords: digital diaries; ecological momentary assessments; victim–offender overlap; conflict management; victimiza-

tion and perpetration

INTRODUCTION

For decades, studies on criminal victimization and offending have demonstrated that

those with a victimization history and those with a crime offending history are not neces-

sarily distinct groups (Gottfredson, 1981; Lauritsen & Laub, 2007). A well-established

finding in the field of criminology is the victim–offender (V-O) overlap (Berg & Mulford,

2020; Jennings et al., 2012), linking individuals reporting both offending and victimiza-

tion across multiple conflicts including delinquency, homicide, and other violent crime

(Jennings et al., 2012). This finding holds up across time, place, and subgroups (Beckley

AUTHORS’ NOTE: We would like to thank Carolina Milesi for management of the project and her expertise

with digital diary data collections and Mateusz Borowiecki for helping the authors with data analysis. We also

thank Kelly Pudelek, Stephanie Jwo, and Maria Bohri for significant contributions to implementing data col-

lection. This research was funded by the National Institute of Justice (Grant No. 2017-VF-GX-0103), Office of

Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. Points of views in this document are those of the authors and do

not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice or any other orga-

nization. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Bruce G. Taylor, NORC at the

University of Chicago, 4350 East-West Highway, Suite 800, Bethesda, MD 20814, USA. e-mail: taylor-bruce@

norc.org.

1073597CJBXXX10.1177/00938548211073597Criminal Justice and BehaviorTaylor et al. / Short Title

research-article2022

Taylor et al. / CORRELATES OF THE VICTIM-OFFENDER OVERLAP 1211

et al., 2018; Berg & Mulford, 2020; Jennings et al., 2010; Kushner et al., 2020). Although

most disputes do not lead to abusive behavior or violence (Gould, 2003), most homicides

and assaults emerge from verbal disputes which escalate to identity contests and bilateral

physical abuse (Cooney, 1998; Tedeschi & Felson, 1994). Furthermore, mechanisms of

conflict management, available to those in a dispute, may generate or inhibit abusive

behavior. Knowing if people experience (and how they tend to handle) nonabusive dis-

putes may clarify how abusive outcomes tend to develop from routine disputes and why

the same people are involved in the V-O overlap (Felson, 1984; Gambetta, 2009; S.

Phillips & Cooney, 2005).

In this article, we explore the V-O overlap using what for this field is an innovative

approach—employing daily digital diaries (i.e., daily text message prompts to complete a

short survey through an app that study participants downloaded at the outset), addressing a

gap in the literature exploring the nature of interpersonal disputes that lead to abuse and the

V-O overlap. A few studies have addressed the problem of recall and telescoping of past

abusive behavior through studies of daily intimate partner violence exposure. For example,

Shorey and colleagues sent daily emails with links to college women to ask about daily dat-

ing violence perpetration via daily online surveys (Shorey et al., 2014), as did Sheehan and

colleagues, (Sheehan & Lau-Barraco, 2019). Only one study examined victimization and

perpetration through daily measures, but this dating violence study focused on only young

women (ages 16–19) recruited as a convenience sample in one city (Matson et al., 2016,

2020). The current analyses draw on a broad national sample, allowing for an assessment of

differences in the V-O overlap by race/ethnicity with just under half of the study sample

were people of color. Whereas many of the prior studies on the V-O overlap focus on sepa-

rate forms of abuse, such as intimate partner abuse (Reingle, Staras, et al., 2012; Tillyer &

Wright, 2014), a key feature of this article is that we examine the nature of a full range of

conflicts that are characterized by mutual abuse (i.e., the V-O overlap, across intimate,

familial, coworker and other relationship types for young adults).

For this study, we used the term “tense conflict” (“conflict” for short) to capture a

broad set interpersonal encounters involving interaction when people were arguing, yell-

ing, or saying or doing hurtful things. Our study includes a broad set of conflicts, some

involving physical, sexual, or verbal/emotional forms of abuse and some involving no

such forms of abuse. For this study, we use the term “abuse” to include physical forms of

abuse (e.g., various forms of assault), sexual forms of abuse (e.g., forced sexual inter-

course), and verbal/emotional forms of abuse (e.g., being insulted or otherwise confronted

aggressively).

The extant research in the V-O overlap literature is limited by traditional measurement of

abuse, which often relies on participant recall over aggregated periods of time of several

months or longer (Muftić et al., 2015; Tillyer & Wright, 2014; Zimmerman et al., 2017). We

collected data from a national sample of 589 young adult (18–32 years old) on a daily basis

through digital diaries over a 6-week period. Importantly, we examined the nature of the

individual conflicts as our main unit of analysis, as opposed to the more typical approach of

examining the individuals as the unit of analyses, with the result that the sample of conflicts

(n = 2,015) exceeds the sample of individuals (n = 589). In other words, we captured

reports of more than one conflict per person. Using multilevel modeling, we examine simul-

taneously the features of the conflict and the characteristics of the individuals involved in

the conflict.