From Bullied to Deviant: The Victim-Offender Overlap Among Bullying Victims

Although much research has explored bullies and bullying victims, little has been done to explore the long-term effects on those who have been bullied. Separately, a growing body of evidence suggests that there is a victim-offender overlap, in which many victims are or become offenders themselves. Taken together, this suggests that bullying victims may themselves be at elevated risk of involvement in deviance or crime. The present study uses data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 to explore this issue, utilizing propensity score matching to control for the shared predictors of offending and victimization. Given that bullying experiences can vary dramatically by gender, gender-specific analyses are performed. Results indicate that controlling for the propensity to be bullied reduces, but does not eliminate, the effect on later criminality.