Short-Term Temporal Clustering of Police-Reported Violent Offending and Victimization

• Published date: 01 September 2018
• Date: 01 September 2018
• Author: Laura Kuitunen,Mikko Aaltonen,Janne Kivivuori
• DOI: 10.1177/0734016818761100
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Short-Term Temporal

Clustering of Police-Reported

Violent Offending and

Victimization: Examining

Timing and the Role of Revenge

Mikko Aaltonen

1

, Janne Kivivuori

1

, and Laura Kuitunen

2

Abstract

Objectives: To examine short-term associations between offending and victimization using daily data

on criminal offenses. We also examine the within-individual association between several types of

offenses and victimization and see whether incidents closer together in time are more likely

reflect revenge motives. Method: We use total data on all victims (n¼88,106) and offenders

(n¼60,584) in police-reported assaults in Finland during 2007–2009 to examine temporal clustering

of the two outcomes. Monthly panel data (n¼4,886) on offending and victimization are analyzed

with fixed-effects regression models, while revenge motives are derived from detailed case

descriptions (n¼299). Results: The risk of violent victimization is higher in months following criminal

offending. Although the offending rates directly before and after victimization are low on absolute

terms, we find that these rates are higher around the time of victimization. Violent offenses closerto

victimization incidents are more likely to include the same parties in opposite roles. Conclusions:

Criminal offending increases the risk of victimization in a state-dependent matter. Closer analysis of

situational and motivational dynamics of victimization and offending requires temporally detailed

data, as a substantial share of the victim–offender overlap is explained by incidents that take place on

the same day, complicating the analysis of the temporal sequence of those events.

Keywords

victim–offender overlap, state dependence, revenge, police records

One of the most consistent empirical regularities in the study of violent victimization is that indi-

viduals with criminal backgrounds have an elevated risk of being victims themselves (Averdijk &

Bernasco, 2015; Jennings, Piquero, & Reingle, 2012). To an important extent, this overlap is likely

1

Institute of Criminology and Legal Policy, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

2

University of Turku, Turku, Finland

Corresponding Author:

Mikko Aaltonen, Institute of Criminology and Legal Policy, University of Helsinki, PO Box 24 (Unioninkatu 40), 00014

University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland.

Email: mikko.e.aaltonen@om.fi

Criminal Justice Review

2018, Vol. 43(3) 309-324

ª2018 Georgia State University

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DOI: 10.1177/0734016818761100

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to be a result of shared risk factors that have an effect on both outcomes (Broidy, Daday, Crandall,

Sklar, & Jost, 2006). In empirical studies, risky routine activities (Cops & Pleysier, 2014) and low

self-control (Flexon, Meldrum, & Piquero, 2014; Schreck, Wright, & Miller, 2002) have been some

of the most central candidates for such risk factors. At the same time, it seems likely that some part

of the overlap is related to state-dependent processes, where criminal offending causally increases

the risk of future victimization above and beyond unobserved heterogeneity.

Several studies have sought to disentangle the state-dependent effect (Lauritsen & Laub, 2007) of

offending on victimization (Chen, 2009a, 2009b) and victimization on offending (Ousey, Wilcox, &

Fisher, 2011; Sullivan, Ousey, & Wilcox, 2015; Zhang, Welte, & Wieczorek, 2001). Some have

used longitudinal data to examine how within-individual change in offending is related to change in

victimization while controlling for stable unobserved heterogeneity (Chen, 2009b; Ousey et al.,

2011), whereas others have compared group-based trajectories of both offending and victimization,

finding similarities in the life-course development of the two outcomes (Jennings, Higgins, Tewks-

bury, Gover, & Piquero, 2010; Smith & Ecob, 2007). Although many of these studies suggest that

offending has a state-dependent positive effect on later victimization (Sullivan et al., 2015), there are

also results suggesting that violent offen ding decreases the risk of later victimizati on (Berg &

Loeber, 2015; Ousey et al., 2011; Smith & Ecob, 2007).

One issue in the study of state-dependent effects between offending and victimization is the

temporal distance between the two events. It is plausible that some of these effects are

“developmental” by nature, for instance, when maltreatment in childhood leads to violent offending

in adulthood. At the same time, some effects could emerge within a very short temporal frame,

perhaps within a span of days or weeks. Methodological issues, however, complicate the analysis of

short-term state-dependent associations. Data sets with yearly or longer measurement intervals are

not optimal in such inquiries, as they cannot reliably distinguish the temporal order of offending and

victimization on weekly or monthly levels. This means that some important short-term effects may

have been missed (Sariaslan, Lichtenstein, Larsson, & Fazel, 2016). Only a handful of studies have

used temporally detailed data (Averdijk & Bernasco, 2015; Sariaslan et al., 2016) to study these

questions, which means that existing research does not provide much insight into short-term

dynamics between offending and victimization.

One specific mechanism that could cause an immediate increase in violent offending after

victimization is revenge. Revenge motives are generally very prevalent in adolescent violent offend-

ing (Kivivuori, Savolainen, & Aaltonen, 2016) and cycles of revenge are a well-known phenomenon

in gang violence (Bjørgo, 2005; Papachristos, 2009). As it stands, the literature on state-dependent

associations between offending and victimization has not looked at retaliatory acts and whether they

might be one explanatory mechanism behind these dynamic associations.

The aim of the current article i s to examine short-term associ ations between offending and

victimization and analyze the potential role that revenge motives play in creating state-dependent

effects between offending and victimization. We contribute to this mostly survey-based literature by

using complete data on police-reported assaults in Finland during 2005–2011, where both offenders

and victims involved in the incidents can be identified. These data include exact dates of these

incidents and thus allow a temporally detailed investigation of these dynamics.

We present three sets of related analyses that increase in level of detail in examining the possi-

bility that some state-dependent associations between victimization and offending are based on

short-term situational and motivational revenge mechanisms. First, we use a fixed-effects regression

model with monthly panel data to examine whether the risk of victimization is higher during periods

of criminal offending. If state-dependent effects exist, the hypothesis is that the risk of violent

victimization should be higher after crimes are committed. In the second part, we increase temporal

precision and the size of the data and examine whether the probability of violent offending changes

in the days, weeks, or months preceding and following violent victimization and vice versa. If

310 Criminal Justice Review 43(3)