Victimization and Polyvictimization of Spanish Youth Involved in Juvenile Justice

Abstract

Multiple victimization, or polyvictimization, is closely related to delinquency and crime, although few studies have studied these experiences in juvenile offenders. Therefore, the aim of this study is to present victimization rates in young offenders from a Southwestern European country. The sample consisted of 101 youth aged between 14 and 17 years, who were mainly recruited from detention centers (77.2%). From a lifetime perspective, the majority had suffered a criminal offense against the person (93.1%), exposure to community violence (95.0%), and peer victimization (86.1%). Prevalence rates for direct and indirect family violence were also high (63.4% and 43.6%). Electronic victimization reached a rate of 40.6% and sexual victimization of 15.8%. Past year experiences showed lower but similar patterns. Based on a community population criterion to define polyvictimization, 65.3% of the sample were considered lifetime polyvictims, while 41.6% were defined as past year polyvictims. Interventions to address multiple, concurrent forms of exposure to violence should be implemented in the justice system as polyvictimization has been revealed as a frequent reality in young offenders, which may result in antisocial behavior.

Moral Disengagement as an Explanatory Factor of the Polyivictimization of Bullying and Cyberbullying

“…The determinations of polyvictim prevalences can vary in accordance with both the minimum number of victimization experiences the researchers consider for a subject to be classified a polyvictim and the timescale over which the subject suffered those abuses. With a timescale of the preceding 12 months and the minimum number of victimization experiences suffered set at two, the range of polyvictim prevalences is 20%–40% [10,11,12]. When the number of abuses is raised to four to six, the polyvictim percentage falls to 7%–9% [13,14,15].…”

“…With regard to the forms of victimization suffered, many studies use as instrument the Juvenile Victimization Questionnaire [19]. This covers 36 different forms of victimization, one of which is cyberbullying [11,13,16,17]. Other studies resort to different measurement instruments, but all cover different types of victimization: Physical, emotional, verbal, social, sexual, electronic, etc.…”

Polivictimización y sintomatología postraumática: el rol del apoyo social y la autoeficacia

“…Los efectos de la polivictimización serían más graves que los efectos de la exposición a un único tipo de violencia (Álvarez-Lister, Pereda, Abad, & Guilera, 2014). En esta línea, distintos autores han encontrado evidencia de que la polivictimización se asocia tanto a la sintomatología internalizadora como externalizadora en adolescentes (Boxer & Terranova, 2008;Cudmore, Cuevas, & Sabina, 2015;Ford, Connor, & Hawke, 2009;Pereda, Abad, & Guilera, 2015).…”

A Study of the Impact of Screening for Poly-Victimization in Juvenile Justice: The Rocky Road to a Successful Investigation in the Real World

“…Poly-victimization places youth at risk of involvement in delinquency and the justice system, as well as recidivism and deepening involvement in juvenile justice DeHart & Moran, 2015;Espinosa, Sorensen, & Lopez, 2013;Ford et al, 2010;Ford et al, 2013;Fox, Perez, Cass, Baglivio, & Epps, 2015). As many as 40%-but far fewer than the 80+% figure for trauma history-of justice-involved youths are poly-victims (Cuevas, Finkelhor, Ormrod, & Turner, 2009;DeHart & Moran, 2015;Ford et al, 2013;Pereda, Abad, & Guilera, 2017). However, poly-victimization has been defined and is measured in many different ways (Grasso, Greene, & Ford, 2013), and there is no widely accepted tool or procedure to screen for poly-victimization with youth who are involved in juvenile justice.…”