The Environmental and Situational Correlates of Victim Injury in Nonfatal Violent Incidents

• Author: Marie Skubak Tillyer,J. Mitchell Miller,Rob Tillyer
• DOI: 10.1177/0093854811400250
• Published date: 01 May 2011
• Date: 01 May 2011
• Subject Matter: Articles

433

CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND BEHAVIOR, Vol. 38 No. 5, May 2011 433-452

DOI: 10.1177/0093854811400250

© 2011 International Association for Correctional and Forensic Psychology

AUTHORS’ NOTE: This study was funded by a grant (26-4905-51) from the Justice Research and Statistics

Association. Please direct all correspondence to Marie Skubak Tillyer, 501 W. Durango Blvd., San Antonio, TX

78207; email: marie.tillyer@utsa.edu.

THE ENVIRONMENTAL AND SITUATIONAL

CORRELATES OF VICTIM INJURY IN

NONFATAL VIOLENT INCIDENTS

MARIE SKUBAK TILLYER

J. MITCHELL MILLER

ROB TILLYER

University of Texas at San Antonio

Previous research has documented several correlates of criminal victimization, but less is known about the factors related to

victim injury during criminal events. Using environmental criminology to understand offender decision making during the

criminal event, victim injury is explored with data from the National Incident Based Reporting System. Incident-level logis-

tic and multinomial regression analyses were conducted to estimate the environmental and situational correlates of victim

injury risk and severity in nonfatal violent events. Findings indicate that environmental and situational factors influence the

likelihood and severity of victim injury, suggesting the utility of an environmental criminological approach for understanding

not just the decision to offend but also offender behavior during criminal events.

Keywords: victim injury; violence; environmental criminology; NIBRS

Research consistently demonstrates that victimization can be understood as a function

of criminal opportunity influenced by environmental and situational factors (Sampson,

1987; Wilcox Rountree, Land, & Miethe, 1994). We extend this logic by positing that such

factors also influence the nature and extent of violent victimization; specifically, we con-

tend that the risk of victim injury and its severity during crime incidents is not random but

rather a function of environmental and situational factors that define real and perceived

opportunity. Not only do these factors influence the decision to offend, but they also affect

offender behavior (e.g., inflicting injury on victims) during criminal incidents.

Official data, such as the Uniform Crime Reports, have historically been collected and

reported in summary form, making incident-level analysis impossible. Some researchers

have used victimization surveys, such as the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS),

to study victim injury (e.g., Bachman & Carmody, 1994; Bachman, Lachs, & Meloy, 2004).

Such studies are useful for understanding victim characteristics associated with victim

injury but generally do not focus on additional incident-level factors that might contribute

to victim injury during violent incidents. Furthermore, these data are not collected imme-

diately after the incident, thus potentially introducing recall errors. Studies that have used

data collected at the incident level generally have not featured incident-level analyses and,

therefore, potentially ignore important incident-level effects (e.g., D’Alessio & Stolzenberg,

2009; Messner, McHugh, & Felson, 2004). The present study overcomes this limitation by

using data from the National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS) and capitalizes on

434 CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND BEHAVIOR

the incident-level properties of the data to explore the factors affecting victim injury risk

and severity in nonfatal violent incidents. Consistent with environmental criminological

theory, this study examines the environmental and situational factors that shape how

criminal incidents develop and unfold, potentially influencing the nature and extent of

victim injury.

THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE

Research demonstrates that victimization is nonrandomly distributed across space (Eck,

Clarke, & Guerette, 2007; Sherman, Gartin, & Buerger, 1989), time (Polvi, Looman,

Humphries, & Pease, 1991), and individuals (Hindelang, Gottfredson, & Garofalo, 1978;

Lauritsen & Quinet, 1995). The environmental criminological perspective—which includes

the routine activities approach, rational choice perspective, situational crime prevention,

and crime pattern theory—suggests that the physical environment and situational context

shape perceived and actual opportunities for offending, thus accounting for the nonrandom

distribution of crime (Wortley & Mazerolle, 2008). The routine activities approach, for

example, posits that crime is a function of the convergence of: (a) an offender prepared to

commit the offense, (b) a suitable target, and (c) the absence of controllers capable of pre-

venting the crime (Cohen & Felson, 1979; Eck, 1994; Felson, 1986, 1995). Structural

changes in societal routine activity patterns influence crime rates by affecting the likeli-

hood of these three elements converging. Those who prevent crime (i.e., controllers)

include guardians who protect targets from being victimized, handlers who control offend-

ers (Felson, 1986, 1995), and managers who supervise places (Eck, 1994). Finkelhor and

Asdigian (1996) describe three types of characteristics that contribute to target suitability:

(a) target vulnerability— the inability to resist or deter crime, (b) target gratifiability—the

qualities or possessions offenders desire, and (c) target antagonism—qualities that arouse

the anger, jealousy, or destructive impulses of offenders. In sum, individual characteristics

can make targets differentially attractive to offenders, thus increasing victimization risk.

The rational choice perspective explains the decision-making process of offenders.

Offenders seek to maximize pleasure and profits while minimizing pain and costs; decision

making thus results from a rational calculus about perceived situational outcomes. Offender

situational perception is a function of previous experience and information-processing

abilities (Clarke & Cornish, 1985). Because these factors vary across offenders and situa-

tions based on intelligence, mental health issues, drug and alcohol use, and other factors,

the information used to make decisions can be inaccurate and contribute to the “bounded”

nature of rationality. A basic tenet of the rational choice perspective is that criminal deci-

sion making is crime specific (Cornish & Clarke, 2008). That is, each criminal event has

its own motives, purposes, and benefits for offenders; therefore, the factors that shape

offender decision making likely vary by offense.

Situational crime prevention suggests that environments and situations are important in

understanding crime events because they can create opportunity for crime, as well as sup-

ply motivation by actively evoking behavioral responses. Situations can precipitate crimi-

nal responses by presenting cues that prompt offending, exerting social pressure to offend,

weakening moral prohibitions, and producing an emotional arousal (Wortley, 2001).

Situational crime prevention techniques, therefore, are focused on manipulating and