Reappraising the Impact of Offending on Victimization: A Propensity Score Matching Approach

Existing evidence clearly supports an empirical connection between offending and victimization. Often called the “victim–offender overlap,” this relationship holds for both sexes, across the life course, and across a wide range of countries and cultural environments. In addition, the relationship is sustained regardless of the study sample and statistical methods applied in the analyses of the sample data. However, there has yet to be a study that examines this relationship for violent and property crime using quasi-experimental methods accounting for a wide range of potential confounders including individual differences and cultural contexts. This study subjects the victim–offender relationship to testing through propensity score matching for both violent and property crimes using an international dataset. The results show that previous violent and theft offending increases the odds of victimization when matching on individual and contextual factors. This finding supports previous literature and suggests that delinquent behavior may act as a “switch” that exposes one to subsequent violent and theft victimization.