Victimization, Crime Propensity, and Deviance: A Multinational Test of General Strain Theory

• Date: 01 November 2019
• Author: Marco Teijón-Alcalá,Christopher Birkbeck
• DOI: 10.1177/1043986219870941
• Published date: 01 November 2019
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/1043986219870941

Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice

2019, Vol. 35(4) 410 –430

© The Author(s) 2019

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/1043986219870941

journals.sagepub.com/home/ccj

Article

Victimization, Crime

Propensity, and Deviance:

A Multinational Test of

General Strain Theory

Marco Teijón-Alcalá1,2

and Christopher Birkbeck1

Abstract

General Strain Theory (GST) identifies victimization as one of the strains most

strongly related to crime which, like other sources of strain, is moderated by

individual and social factors. Recently, Agnew extended the theorization of coping

strategies by proposing that the effects of strain on deviance are conditioned

by individual and social factors in combination, rather than singly, which he

labeled crime propensity. Tests of the propensity hypothesis have so far yielded

mixed results, highlighting the value of additional studies. Whereas previous

tests have focused on single countries, either in North America or Asia, we test

the propensity hypothesis using data on adolescents in 25 countries collected

through the International Self-Report Delinquency Study (ISRD3; n = 57,760).

A series of ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions show that the relationship

between victimization and delinquency/substance use is conditioned by the effects

of individuals’ crime propensity, thereby supporting the recent extension to GST.

Keywords

general strain theory, victimization, crime propensity, ISRD3

1University of Salford, Manchester, UK

2Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Madrid, Spain

Corresponding Author:

Marco Teijón-Alcalá, Departamento de Derecho Penal y Criminología, Universidad Nacional de

Educación a Distancia, Calle Obispo Trejo, 2, Madrid 28040, Spain.

Email: mteijon@madrid.uned.es

870941CCJXXX10.1177/1043986219870941Journal of Contemporary Criminal JusticeTeijón-Alcalá et al.

research-article2019

Teijón-Alcalá et al. 411

Introduction

Even though it may be treated by popular opinion and the law as an incidental irony,

criminal behavior subsequent to being victimized has been amply demonstrated in

qualitative studies of offenders (e.g., Lockwood, 1997; Luckenbill, 1977; Manasse &

Ganem, 2009). For its part, quantitative criminology has revealed the “overlap” between

victimization and offending through surveys which show that some individuals report

both types of experience during the recent past (Jennings, Piquero, & Reingle, 2012;

Posick, 2013; Schreck, Stewart, & Osgood, 2008). The most conservative reading of

such results treats the overlap simply as co-occurrence and seeks the causes of this

phenomenon in a common underlying factor such as “exposure” to social environments

that propitiate both offending and victimization (e.g., Osgood, Wilson, O’Malley,

Bachman, & Johnston, 1996) or the personality trait of low self-control (e.g., Higgins,

Jennings, Tewksbury, & Gibson, 2009). But there are two theories in criminology—

Agnew’s (1992) General Strain Theory (GST) and Wikström’s (2010) Situational

Action Theory (SAT)—which offer a causal link between prior victimization and sub-

sequent offending. According to GST, victimization is a “noxious stimulus” (Agnew,

1992, p. 58) which causes strain in the individual and will, with certain coping strate-

gies, lead to criminal behavior as a reaction to that strain. In SAT, victimization repre-

sents a source of provocation which, depending upon the characteristics of the person

and the setting, can lead to crime as an immediate response. These theories are similar

in positing at least some crime as a response to external frictions or provocations and in

invoking crime propensity as a key component of the causal process. They differ,

among other things, in their center of attention (the person in GST, situations and set-

tings in SAT) and in their conception of crime propensity (multifactorial in GST, moral-

ity and self-control in SAT). In this article, we focus on GST, although SAT provides a

useful comparator and makes a brief reappearance in our discussion and conclusion.

Although much work has tested GST in relation to varied sources of strain and

largely found support for its main propositions (Agnew, 2001), the variables hypoth-

esized as conditioning the link between strain and crime have received only mixed

support in empirical studies (Agnew, 2013). This led Agnew (2013) to propose an

extension to GST which specified that conditioning variables only play that role when

considered in combination rather than singly. However, tests of this extension—most

of them including victimization as a source of strain—have also produced mixed

results, thereby indicating the need for additional work. In this article, we present a

new test of the extension using data from a large multinational sample. We begin with

a brief overview of GST and its main concepts and propositions. We then review the

prior tests of the extension to GST, noting the varied study designs and mixed results.

Following this, we describe the dataset and present our analysis.

GST and the Path From Victimization to Offending

GST has been amply developed and discussed within criminology and the reader is

referred to Agnew’s (1992, 2001, 2007, 2013) key publications for a full appreciation