Role Differentiation in an Adolescent Victim-Offender Typology

The present study evaluates adolescent victimization and offending using cross-sectional survey data from 1,475 adolescents living in a disadvantaged Comuna in Medellin, Colombia, while paying particular attention to the ways in which both victimization and violent offending are operationalized. We find that 37% of respondents experienced no lifetime victimization, while 60% experienced vicarious, and 4% personal victimization. When restricting violent offending to behavior involving a weapon, the majority of offenders (81%) also experienced victimization while only 33% of victims were also weapons offenders. Our final analysis seeks to identify theoretical conditions which differentiate roles in a victim-offender typology, a result we determine varies significantly depending on how "violent offending" is measured.