TY - JOUR
T1 - Student weapon possession and the "fear and victimization hypothesis"
T2 - Unraveling the temporal order
AU - Wilcox, Pamela
AU - May, David C.
AU - Roberts, Staci D.
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was sponsored, in part, by grants (DA-05312 and DA-11317, Richard R. Clayton, PI) from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. The authors would like to thank Richard R. Clayton, Graham C. Ousey, Kimberly Reeder, Shayne Jones, Michelle Campbell Augustine, and Jon Paul Bryan, for their contributions to the Rural Substance Abuse and Violence Project, which provides the data analyzed here.
Copyright:
Copyright 2011 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2006/12/1
Y1 - 2006/12/1
N2 - Using longitudinal data from nearly 4,000 students across 113 public schools in Kentucky, we attempt to unravel the direction of the relationships between student weapon carrying and various objective and subjective school-crime experiences, including victimization, perceived risk of school victimization, and fear of school victimization. Overall, we found little support for the idea that fear and victimization increase weapon carrying, controlling for other theoretically important predictors, including delinquent offending. While 7th-grade victimization was modestly associated with increased non-gun weapon carrying in 8th grade, high perceptions of individual victimization risk in 7th grade decreased both subsequent gun and non-gun weapon carrying. Fear of criminal victimization in 7th grade did not predict either type of subsequent (8th-grade) weapon carrying. Though fear, risk, and victimization were inconsistent predictors of gun and non-gun weapon carrying, we found strong and consistent support for the effects of weapon carrying on subsequent fear, risk, victimization, and offending. However, contrary to the implications of fear and victimization hypotheses, both gun carrying and non-gun weapon carrying in the 8th grade increased fear of school crime, perceived risk, and actual victimization in the 9th grade. Implications of these findings for the applicability of a "weapons" or "triggering" effect are discussed.
AB - Using longitudinal data from nearly 4,000 students across 113 public schools in Kentucky, we attempt to unravel the direction of the relationships between student weapon carrying and various objective and subjective school-crime experiences, including victimization, perceived risk of school victimization, and fear of school victimization. Overall, we found little support for the idea that fear and victimization increase weapon carrying, controlling for other theoretically important predictors, including delinquent offending. While 7th-grade victimization was modestly associated with increased non-gun weapon carrying in 8th grade, high perceptions of individual victimization risk in 7th grade decreased both subsequent gun and non-gun weapon carrying. Fear of criminal victimization in 7th grade did not predict either type of subsequent (8th-grade) weapon carrying. Though fear, risk, and victimization were inconsistent predictors of gun and non-gun weapon carrying, we found strong and consistent support for the effects of weapon carrying on subsequent fear, risk, victimization, and offending. However, contrary to the implications of fear and victimization hypotheses, both gun carrying and non-gun weapon carrying in the 8th grade increased fear of school crime, perceived risk, and actual victimization in the 9th grade. Implications of these findings for the applicability of a "weapons" or "triggering" effect are discussed.
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U2 - 10.1080/07418820600985362
DO - 10.1080/07418820600985362
M3 - Review article
AN - SCOPUS:33750381374
SN - 0741-8825
VL - 23
SP - 502
EP - 529
JO - Justice Quarterly
JF - Justice Quarterly
IS - 4
ER -