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Argues that personal characteristics put youth at risk for victimization, not through any lifestyle or routine activity mechanism, but by making certain youth more 'congruent' with the needs, motives, or reactivities of potential offenders. Three specific types of such characteristics are those that increase the potential victim's target vulnerability (e.g., physical weakness or psychological distress), target gratifiability (e.g., female gender for the crime of sexual assault), or target antagonism (e.g., behaviors or ethnic or group identities that may spark hostility or resentment). Using data from the National Youth Victimization Prevention Study, in which 2,000 youth (aged 10-16) were interviewed about their victimization experiences, variables measuring aspects of target congruence were tested. The target congruence variables had predictive power with 3 separate kinds of youth victimization: nonfamily assault, sexual assault, and parental assault. Moreover, variables representing each of the 3 subcategories of target congruence variables (vulnerability, gratifiability, and antagonism) were all significant contributors in predicting at least 1 kind of victimization. |
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