Exploring Vulnerability to Deviant Coping among Victims of Crime in Two Post-Soviet Cities

Abstract

This study pursues two important goals: 1) assessment of the offender-victim overlap in non-Western cultural contexts and 2) examination of complex moderating influences and mediating factors that help explain the relationship between offending and victimization. Interview data from 700 Ukrainian and 735 Russian adults are used to assess main and interactive effects of theoretical predictors on violent and property offending. Findings reveal a moderate relationship between victimization and offending partially explained by association with deviant peers, self-control, and angry emotions. Moreover, association with deviant peers, depression, and anger appear to condition the relationship. Analyses support and clarify the victim-offender overlap, suggesting it is a universal phenomenon crossing national contexts and that the likelihood of a crime victim becoming an offender is influenced by individual traits, peer relationships, and contemporaneous emotional affect shaping behavioral responses to criminal victimization.