VIOLENT OFFENDING AND VICTIMIZATION IN ADOLESCENCE: SOCIAL NETWORK MECHANISMS AND HOMOPHILY*

• Author: JACOB T.N. YOUNG,JILLIAN J. TURANOVIC
• Date: 01 August 2016
• Published date: 01 August 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9125.12112

VIOLENT OFFENDING AND VICTIMIZATION IN

ADOLESCENCE: SOCIAL NETWORK MECHANISMS

AND HOMOPHILY∗

JILLIAN J. TURANOVIC1and JACOB T.N. YOUNG2

1College of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Florida State University

2School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Arizona State University

KEYWORDS: violence, victimization, social networks, homophily, adolescence

Although violent offending and victimization share many features, they can affect

adolescent social relationships in distinct ways. To understand these differences, we

take a network approach to examine the mechanisms responsible for similarities (i.e.,

homophily) in violent offending and violent victimization among friends. Our goal

is to determine whether the social network mechanisms that produce homophily for

violent offending are similar to or different from those that produce homophily for

violent victimization. By using stochastic actor-oriented modeling and two waves of

friendship network data for 1,948 respondents from the National Longitudinal Study

of Adolescent to Adult Health, we examine homophily mechanisms of preference for

similarity, avoidance, and inf‌luence with respect to youth violence and victimization.

The results demonstrate that homophily observed for violent offending primarily re-

f‌lects selection of similar others, whereas homophily observed for victimization ref‌lects

the tendency among alters to avoid victimized youth. These f‌indings have important

implications for future research and suggest that, among adolescents, violent offending

and victimization homophily are the result of unique social processes.

Criminologists have long observed the many similarities that exist between violent

offenders and victims of violence. Beginning with the works of von Hentig (1948) and

Wolfgang (1958), decades of scholarship have aff‌irmed that victims and offenders often

∗Additional supporting information can be found in the listing for this article in the Wiley Online

Library at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/crim.2016.54.issue-3/issuetoc.

Both authors contributed equally to the preparation of the article. We give special thanks to Travis

Pratt and David Schaefer for their comments on earlier drafts. We would also like to thank Wayne

Osgood and three anonymous reviewers for providing us such helpful feedback and guidance—our

article was strengthened greatly as a result. This research uses data from Add Health, a program

project directed by Kathleen Mullan Harris and designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman,

and Kathleen Mullan Harris at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and is funded

by grant P01-HD31921 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and

Human Development, with cooperative funding from 23 other federal agencies and foundations.

Special acknowledgment is due Ronald R. Rindfuss and Barbara Entwisle for assistance in the

original design. Information on how to obtain the Add Health data f‌iles is available on the Add

Health website (http://www.cpc.unc.edu/addhealth). No direct support was received from grant

P01-HD31921 for this analysis.

Direct correspondence to Jillian Turanovic, College of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Florida

State University, Eppes Hall, 112 S. Copeland Street, Tallahassee, FL 32306-1273 (e-mail:

jturanovic@fsu.edu).

C2016 American Society of Criminology doi: 10.1111/1745-9125.12112

CRIMINOLOGY Volume 54 Number 3 487–519 2016 487

488 TURANOVIC & YOUNG

come from the same population pool (Berg, 2012; Lauritsen and Laub, 2007; Schreck

and Stewart, 2011). Indeed, offenders and victims tend to be similar demographically

(e.g., they are more likely to be young, unmarried, male, and non-White; Hindelang,

Gottfredson, and Garofalo, 1978), they often share similar personality traits (e.g., low

self-control; Pratt et al., 2014), they engage in similar delinquent lifestyles (e.g., drink al-

cohol, use drugs, and commit petty crimes; Turanovic and Pratt, 2014), and they hail from

similar communities (e.g., neighborhoods plagued by structural disadvantage; Sampson,

Raudenbush, and Earls, 1997). Violent victimization and offending also tend to occur in

the same group-based settings, such as in the presence of deviant peers and in the ab-

sence of authority f‌igures (Osgood et al., 1996; Schreck and Fisher, 2004; Schreck, Stew-

art, and Osgood, 2008). For these reasons, scholars often use the same theories to explain

both violent offending and victimization among adolescents (Berg et al., 2012; Jennings,

Piquero, and Reingle, 2012), with some suggesting the two might be the product of “sim-

ilar mechanisms” (Sullivan, Ousey, and Wilcox, 2016).

Nevertheless, focusing too closely on the similarities between violent offending and vic-

timization can mask a key distinction between the two—that they can affect the nature

and quality of interpersonal interactions in unique ways. Specif‌ically, peers may treat vic-

tims of violence differently than they do violent offenders (e.g., by rejecting or avoiding

them), especially because status and popularity are often linked to displays of aggression

during adolescence (Faris and Felmlee, 2014; Moff‌itt, 1993). In addition, violent offend-

ers may inf‌luence their friends’ behaviors in ways that are distinct from victims, such as

through the social learning of crime. Although researchers have identif‌ied characteristics

of social networks that serve as either protective or risk factors against violent offending

and violent victimization (e.g., network size, centrality, or the proportion of delinquent

or victimized peers in a network; see Haynie and Osgood, 2005; Ramirez et al., 2012;

Schreck, Fisher, and Miller, 2004), far less attention has been paid to how offending and

victimization inf‌luence adolescent friendship networks over time.

In examining this issue, we are particularly interested in identifying the mechanisms

responsible for similarities (i.e., “homophily”) in violent offending and in violent victim-

ization among friends (Brechwald and Prinstein, 2011). Homophily is one of the strongest

patterns of human association and is important to investigate, in part, because of how it

limits the information that people receive, the attitudes they form, and the interactions

they experience (McPherson, Smith-Lovin, and Cook, 2001). In the case of violent of-

fending, for instance, homophily suggests that violent youth are reliant on others who

are also violent themselves—friends who may reinforce bad behaviors, provide limited

support, and may hinder prosocial achievements (Akers, 1998; Staff and Kreager, 2008;

Warr, 2002). Homophily in victimization can be similarly troubling, whereby victims are

more likely to be friends with other victims—youth who are coping with their own trau-

matic experiences and who may not be able to offer needed assistance or social support

(Agnew, 2006; Holt and Espelage, 2007).

The problem, however, is that we know a lot more about the potential mechanisms

responsible for homophily in offending than we do for victimization (Haynie, Doogan,

and Soller, 2014; Jose et al., 2016; Weerman, 2011). With violent offending, for example,

homophily can arise through selection, where youth choose friends who possess similar

violent attributes (Gottfredson and Hirschi, 1990; Hirschi, 1969), and through inf‌luence,

where friends shape and reinforce violent attributes in each other over time (Akers, 1973;

VIOLENCE AND VICTIMIZATION IN ADOLESCENT NETWORKS 489

Sutherland, 1947). When it comes to violent victimization, however, things are a lot less

clear. Victims might not prefer to seek out other victims as friends unless they have no

other choice (i.e., if nonvictims in their social network avoid them). In addition, the inf‌lu-

ence process may operate differently for victimization than it does for offending, where

it may be less a product of the transmission of delinquent values and reinforcements

and more about becoming an attractive target as a result of one’s friendships with other

victims.

Several recent longitudinal studies have identif‌ied the network processes that under-

lie general forms of delinquency and aggression among youth (Baerveldt, Van Rossem,

and V ¨

olker, 2008; Jose et al., 2016; Weerman, 2011); and yet, those that have focused on

the mechanisms underlying violence are in short supply (cf. Haynie, Doogan, and Soller,

2014). This is problematic because, unlike drinking alcohol, skipping school, shoplifting,

and spreading rumors, violence is not typically considered a normative feature of adoles-

cent development (Giordano, Cernkovich, and Pugh, 1986; Matza, 1964; Moff‌itt, 1993).

The processes responsible for homophily in violent offending may therefore differ from

those observed for less serious forms of delinquent and aggressive behavior. Moreover,

even though victimization is one of the strongest correlates of offending among ado-

lescents, few studies of offending within friendship networks have taken victimization

into account (Rokven et al., 2016). Doing so can reveal important patterns that advance

what we currently know about how violent offending and victimization shape the lives of

youth.

Accordingly, by using stochastic actor-oriented models and two waves of friendship

network data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add

Health), we identify the mechanisms that generate homophily in violent offending and

in victimization among friends. Our primary research question is this: Are the network

mechanisms that produce homophily in adolescent violent offending and victimization

similar or different? The broader implication of the answer to this question is that, if the

mechanisms generating homophily are the same for offending and victimization, it would

lend support to the notion that the two are fundamentally similar social phenomena. If

so, then they would likely warrant similar theoretical explanations and group-based in-

terventions. If, however, the mechanisms appear to be different, it would suggest that the

parallels often drawn between violent offending and victimization may be overstated. Ei-

ther way, uncovering these various mechanisms can help us gain a better understanding

of how social networks structure adolescents’ vulnerability to violence, both as offenders

and as victims.

HOMOPHILY IN ADOLESCENT FRIENDSHIP NETWORKS

Adolescence is an important stage in the life course. This is a time when people go

through a host of personal and social changes—changes that result from pubertal devel-

opment, cognitive development, the emergence of sexuality, and importantly, redef‌ined

social roles (Dahl, 2004; Steinberg and Morris, 2001; Warr, 2002). Friendships become es-

pecially more meaningful during these years, and youth begin to spend a greater number

of their waking hours with peers outside of the home—often without adults around to

supervise them (Osgood et al., 1996). Youth also become more concerned with pursuing

social rewards during adolescence, with the goals of achieving both status and affection

through their friendships with others (Dijkstra et al., 2010; Ormel et al., 1997).