Effects of Neighborhood and Family Structure on Violent Victimization and Violent Delinquency

摘要

This report examines the effect of neighborhood and family structure (one vs. two parents) and their interaction on violent victimization and violent offending. The report was motivated in part by a forthcoming OJJDP Bulletin by Janet Lauritsen who examined family structure and neighborhood effects on violent victimization that occurred in a national sample in the more immediate neighborhood surrounding a victims home. Lauritsen found that youth living in single parent families experience significantly greater risks of violent victimization and that this risk was greatly magnified in disadvantaged neighborhoods. This report uses data from two studies to examine neighborhood and family structure effects. The Denver Neighborhood Study (DNS), which is a cross-sectional study of the entire City of Denver and the Denver Youth Survey (DYS), which is a long-term longitudinal study of very high-risk neighborhoods of Denver. The inclusion of only very high-risk neighborhoods in the DYS, precludes its use to examine neighborhood effects. However, since the Bulletin reports that the effect of family structure was most important in such high risk neighborhoods, the use of the DYS for some purposes is germane to the overall set of findings. This report also expands the content areas and risk factors for violent victimization considered. First, involvement in violent behavior is a fairly well known risk for violent victimization and so violent behavior is included in some of the statistical models examined. Second, given the overlap of violent offending and violent victimization, examination of the relationship of neighborhoods and family structure to violent offending is also considered.