Conclusion

Social scientists have a long tradition of studying how communities can be important sources of protection from violence and disorder. Similarly, many community-based programs have been designed to prevent violence among youth (Osofsky, 2001). Most research and practice emphasize increasing levels of informal social control (e.g., adult monitoring of children’s playgroups and residents’ willingness to intervene in youth disturbances) rather than promoting more formal social control (e.g., increased policing).

Community-based research shows that levels of informal social control are important factors in reducing adult victimization in a community (Sampson and Groves, 1989; Sampson, Raudenbush, and Earls, 1997). Informal social control takes advantage of both natural surveillance and residents’ local networks to help maintain peace and order in a community. Communities tend to have less capacity for informal social control when they lack economic and political resources and the kind of stability that permits the development of strong ties to the local area. The research in this Bulletin shows that communities will have the most difficulty protecting youth from victimization if they are highly disadvantaged and, more specifically, if they have high proportions of young people and single-parent families. These conditions make preventing violence difficult because fewer adults are available to monitor youth activities. In addition, those adults who are available are more economically distressed and have less time and incentive to develop strong community networks. These findings suggest that youth victimization prevention programs and postvictimization services should be allocated according to an area’s family and age composition rather than economic and racial or ethnic factors.

This research also suggests that youth victimization prevention and services should place more emphasis on youth in single-parent families. Earlier research has not paid sufficient attention to how families help reduce violence risk among adolescents. This study suggests that family type and length of residence are associated with risk, even when household economic resources and community factors are controlled. Additional research is needed to determine what accounts for the remaining differences in risk across youth in single- and two-parent families.

The finding that children in single-parent families are at higher risk for victimization than children in two-parent families may reflect the influence of recent disruptions in the youth’s lives. To assess the impact of recent family and/or school disruption on youth victimization requires the use of prospective longitudinal data that contain information on individuals, their families, and communities over time.

Nonetheless, it appears that youth are at the greatest risk for stranger and nonstranger victimization when they spend less time at home and when they have lived in their homes for shorter periods of time. Although being away from parental surveillance and in less familiar environments may seem like obvious risk factors to many parents and adolescents, the magnitude of their importance has probably been underestimated. This research shows that these two factors are the strongest and most consistent of all the characteristics examined above. Although communities can serve as important sources of informal social control and help guard against youth victimization, parents can help reduce their children’s risk by recognizing the special difficulties they face due to residential changes and by closely monitoring children’s activities when they are away from home.

How Families and Communities Influence Youth Victimization	OJJDP Bulletin • November 2003