Personal victimization in a high-risk environment: Homeless and runaway adolescents

Criminal opportunity theories identify four basic constructs that are centr al to models of victimization: proximity, exposure, victim attractiveness, and guardianship. Proximity was controlled, allowing the examination of the potential effects of exposure, victim attractiveness, and guardianship in more derail. Discrete-time event history models were used to estimate the c ontemporary-time predictors of personal victimization and the time-lagged e ffect of prior victimization from a five-wave longitudinal study of street youths. The study found strong support for exposure hypotheses with increas ed victimization risk associated with time an the streets, substance abuse, and affiliation with deviant peers. Selected indicators of victim attracti veness and guardianship hypotheses were significant but, overall, the suppo rt for these two dimensions was more limited Prior victimization was associ ated with approximately a 2.5 times increase in the odds of subsequent vict imization. This study suggests several interpretations of this effect and i t argues for additional situation-specific research to provide further elab oration of victimization theories.