Jillian J Turanovic

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Verified

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• PhD
• Professor (Associate) at University of Colorado Boulder

School violence is a significant social concern. To better understand its sources, a comprehensive meta-analysis of the school violence and victimization literature was undertaken. Across 761 studies, the relative effects of 30 different individual, school, and community level correlates were assessed (8,790 effect size estimates). Violence and vic...

Purpose Over the past 25 years, across a wide range of academic disciplines, the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health has facilitated a wealth of research on the sources and consequences of victimization and exposure to violence (ETV). In this review, I reflect broadly on the knowledge gleaned from this impressive data source....

Victimization can harm youth in various ways and negatively affect their friendships with peers. Nevertheless, not all victimized youth are impacted similarly, and the literature is unclear regarding why some victims are more likely than others to experience friendship-based consequences. Using five waves of data on 901 adolescents (6th grade at wa...

The relevance of criminology to matters of public policy has been hotly debated throughout the history of the discipline. Yet time and again, we have borne witness to the consequences of harmful criminal justice practices that do little to reduce crime or improve the lives of our most vulnerable populations. Given the urgent need for evidence-infor...

Objective Although research has focused on the organizational precursors to prison riots and their situational features, little is known about the consequences of prison riots on incarcerated persons. In the current study, we use a novel application of regression discontinuity (RD) analysis to examine the effects of exposure to a prison riot on pri...

Background: Childhood abuse and domestic violence exposure are pervasive and linked to many adverse outcomes, including revictimization across the lifespan. Few studies examine the associations between types and combinations of childhood abuse and later revictimization using large representative samples of the general population, especially in the...

Prison violence is a persistent problem for institutional corrections and the rehabilitation of incarcerated individuals. Estimates suggest that one in three men and one in four women in prison experience physical violence, while over half of correctional staff express fear of serious injury or death while on the job. However, these statistics are...

Objectives: Although childhood exposure to family violence has been linked to crime and delinquency over the life course, it rarely occurs in isolation from other household hardships. Drawing from developmental hypotheses of cumulative disadvantage and disadvantage saturation, we examine how the effect of childhood exposure to family violence (i.e....

Persons who have experienced homelessness have higher lifetime risks of violent victimization relative to the general population. However, the long-term impacts of violent victimization on various facets of well-being are poorly understood among ever-homeless persons, particularly when violence is experienced in early adulthood. Here, using data fr...

Victims of crime often experience numerous difficulties coping with trauma and navigating the criminal justice process. To help mitigate these challenges, victim service programs have been developed. Despite the exponential growth in victim service programs over the past several decades, relatively little is known about “what works” in the field of...

Crime victimization can be a traumatic experience that results in numerous negative behavioral, health, and emotional problems, including the perpetration of criminal behavior. Victim services can play an important role in crime prevention, but little research has examined their effectiveness in this way. This chapter provides a brief overview of t...

Internalizing symptoms have been linked to bullying perpetration and victimization in adolescence. However, the directions of any causal relationships remain unclear, and limited research has identified the mechanisms that explain the associations. Given the salience of peer relationships during the teenage years, we examine whether perceived suppo...

Although the COVID-19 pandemic has brought much of U.S. society to a grinding halt, its impact on the occurrence of mass shootings is largely unknown. Using data from the Gun Violence Archive and an interrupted time-series design, we analyzed weekly counts of mass shootings in the U.S. from 2019 through 2021. Results show that total, private, and p...

Scholars have called for greater understanding of the effects of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) on later youth development, including research on sleep as a potential contributor to delinquency. This study seeks to extend that work by situating the focus on ACEs and sleep within a life-course perspective, one that examines life events and tur...

The multifaceted construct of “school violence” includes a wide variety of acts, such as physical assault and battery, physical aggression, noncontact aggression (e.g., throwing things), broadly defined externalizing behavior, bullying, fighting, robbery, unwanted sexual contact, weapon possession, and verbal threats. Although school violence is on...

Research finds that adolescent violent victimization results in numerous lasting negative life consequences. However, the long‐term impacts of victimization are understudied among immigrant youth. Using a subsample of 952 immigrants from Waves I–III of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, regression models are specified to...

Violent victimization experiences correspond to an array of negative consequences including poorer mental and physical health. Drawing on life course theories of stress proliferation and well-being, we use four waves of data from the Add Health study to identify pathways of violent victimization from adolescence through young adulthood using group-...

Although the visitation-recidivism relationship has been studied extensively among adult correctional populations, it has received little attention among incarcerated juveniles. In this study, we use a diverse sample of youth released from confinement in Florida ( N = 7,296) to examine the effects of visitation and visitation consistency on two mea...

While in prison, incarcerated persons can be subjected to qualitatively different conditions of confinement ranging from minimum to maximum security settings. In this study, we use data on 17,542 incarcerated men to assess whether the relationship between visitation and recidivism varies across the types of settings (i.e., minimum, medium, close, a...

We recently published an article in Victims & Offenders in which we argued that: (1) the generality of deviance is real (i.e., offenders rarely specialize in any form of criminal or deviant behavior), (2) specialty courts typically assume – either implicitly or explicitly – that offenders do, in fact, specialize primarily in a particular form of cr...

Incarceration is a health damaging experience that disproportionately impacts Black Americans. Although existing research has explored broader racial disparities in the health consequences of imprisonment, little research has examined within-individual changes in health declines following incarceration. Accordingly, in this study, we examine whethe...

Background In the United States, foreign-born persons often have better health outcomes than their native-born peers, despite exposure to adversity. Nevertheless, it is unclear whether this pattern extends to the consequences of life events, such as incarceration, that separate immigrants from their supportive networks and increase exposure to adve...

Instrumental support from parents can be a protective factor in the lives of children and adolescents—one that serves to reduce the risks of drug and alcohol use. But the link between instrumental support from parents and substance use has seldom been explored in emerging adulthood. In particular, it is unclear whether instrumental support from par...

Witnessing violence can negatively affect students’ outcomes, but their friendships may mitigate those effects. This study investigated the extent to which seeing someone shot in the last year related to seven school-related outcomes. Additionally, it examined the extent to which prosocial and deviant friends moderate these relationships. This stud...

Drawing on qualitative data from focus groups with correctional personnel in one of the nation's largest women's prisons, this study examines staff perceptions of how incarcerated women cope with long-term solitary confinement. We find that women's strong ties to other women and their prison pseudofamilies may influence the behaviors that explain t...

Meta-analyses are appearing more frequently in the criminological literature. Yet the methods typically used are guided by a methodological paradigm that risks producing meta-analyses of limited value. Here we outline three key methodological issues that meta-analysts face and we present a methodological challenge to the dominant meta-analysis para...

For juveniles in residential facilities, visits from family can be quite important. But juveniles are routinely confined far from home, and travel distance can deter many families from visiting. In the current study, we examined the conditions under which families overcome distance as a barrier to visitation. We used data on juveniles who completed...

Studies increasingly highlight that poor sleep is associated with harmful health and behavioral outcomes, including delinquency. Theory and research suggest that sleep effects may be curvilinear and greater for some groups, but this idea remains largely unexamined in studies of adolescent offending. Drawing on prior scholarship and regression analy...

Although research suggests that LGBTQ youth are at risk for victimization at school, it remains unclear just how much more likely they are to be victimized relative to heterosexual or cisgender youth, or the conditions under which their risks for victimization are highest. Accordingly, we conducted a meta-analysis on the relationship between LGBTQ...

Physical abuse in childhood places individuals at risk for many behavioral and mental health problems in adulthood. Nevertheless, not all abused children will ultimately experience these negative outcomes. Using a subsample of physically abused youth from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, we examined whether protective...

Bringing together cutting-edge theory and research that bridges academic disciplines from criminology and criminal justice, to developmental psychology, sociology, and political science, Thinking About Victimization offers an authoritative, comprehensive, and refreshingly accessible overview of scholarship on the nature, sources, and consequences o...

Specialty courts—such as drug courts, mental health courts, or domestic violence courts—tend to assume, either implicitly or explicitly, that particular groups of offenders have unique problems that can be best met with specialized case processing. Put simply, specialty courts assume that offenders themselves are specialists when it comes to offend...

Purpose: Victimization is a negative life experience that tends to occur in the context of one’s own offending. Although a great deal of literature shows that victimization often leads to increases in criminal behavior, there are also reasons to believe that, for some offenders, victimization can serve as a turning point that marks the end of crimi...

Violent victimization—particularly when it happens to young people—can inflict a wide array of negative consequences across the life course. Nevertheless, some victims are more likely to suffer these consequences than others, and we do not have a very good understanding of why that is. One promising avenue of research is to examine how individuals’...

Studies have found that sexual victimization can adversely affect an adolescent’s psychological well-being, physical health, and behavior. Little is known, however, about how friendships are influenced by such victimization. Drawing on research on sexual violence and the salience of peers among adolescents, the current study extends prior work by e...

There is a growing "replication crisis" in the social and behavioral sciences, where original research across a wide array of substantive areas has failed to replicate when conducted by others. This problem highlights the importance of carefully revisiting original research-particularly studies that have exerted a significant influence over the fie...

Objectives: Research indicates that victims who make changes to their risky behavioral routines are better able to avoid being victimized again in the future. Nevertheless, some victims’ abilities to change their behaviors may be limited by what Hindelang et al. (1978) referred to as “structural constraints.” To assess this issue, we determine: (1)...

This study examined the association criminal victimization has with two mental health outcomes (i.e., depressive symptoms and behavioral avoidance coping) among older adults. This study also tested whether strong familial ties condition the harmful results of victimization. This study used cross-sectional survey data from interviews conducted in Ar...

On the basis of limited empirical evidence, advocates of Project HOPE (Hawaii’s Opportunity Probation with Enforcement) have succeeded in spreading the model to a reported 31 states and 160 locations. A recent randomized control experiment across four sites has revealed negative results: no overall effect on recidivism. In this context, we examine...

The authors present a comprehensive overview of the current literature on the extent, correlates, and consequences of school-based incidents of victimization in the United States. The primary sources of data on crime and victimization in schools, including periodic, nationally representative surveys, are reviewed. These data are used to describe th...

Prison visitation is an important tool used to strengthen inmates' social ties and incentivize good behavior in prison. Nevertheless, prison visits do not always go well for inmates, and we know little about why that is. Accordingly , in the current study we examined inmates' varied experiences with prison visitation. We used data collected from 22...

Native American youth are at an elevated risk of violent victimization. And because of their vulnerable position in society, they may also be at risk of experiencing a host of adverse consequences as a result of being victimized. Accordingly, using a subsample of 558 Native American youth and two waves of data from the National Longitudinal Study o...

This entry discusses the consequences of victimization for children and adolescents and also key theoretical correlates of victimization among youth (e.g., lifestyles and routine activities, low self‐control, and peer group influences). As children move into adolescence, they become increasingly autonomous and spend a greater proportion of their wa...

Objectives: The primary objective of this study is to investigate whether depression is associated with reduced participation in social activities among older adults. Additionally, this study assesses whether high-quality familial ties diminish the negative association between depression and social activities. Methods: Using cross-sectional tele...

The search for reliable risk factors is a staple among both scholars and policymakers concerned with structuring interventions designed to reduce aggressive and violent behavior. Within this line of work, strong claims have recently been made regarding the predictive capacity of a potential physical biomarker of criminogenic risk: the 2D:4D digit r...

Although the juvenile justice system has adopted many alternatives to detention, the practice of detaining youth for failing to appear in court remains common. Despite its widespread use, it is unclear whether this form of detainment is harmful to juvenile offenders—especially to those who pose no credible threat to public safety. Accordingly, usin...

As criminology has become more interdisciplinary in recent years, biosocial criminology has earned a place at the table. Although this perspective comes in many forms, one important proposition has gained increasing attention: that the 2D:4D finger digit ratio—a purported physical biomarker for exposure to fetal testosterone—is related to criminal,...

Although violent offending and victimization share many features, they can affect adolescent social relationships in distinct ways. To understand these differences, we take a network approach to examine the mechanisms responsible for similarities (i.e., homophily) in violent offending and violent victimization among friends. Our goal is to determin...

The individual and social protective factors that help break the cycle of violence are examined. Specifically, this study investigates (a) the individual and social protective factors that reduce violent offending among previously victimized children, and (b) whether certain protective factors are more or less important depending on the type and fr...

Although the prison visitation literature is advancing in significant ways, it remains slowed by a reliance on a limited methodological approach. Here, we advocate for a new way to study visitation through the use of a mixed-method design. We discuss what knowledge can be gleaned by examining visitation differently and describe our efforts to do so...

Lifestyle and routine activity theories both view victimization through the lens of the convergence a motivated offender, an attractive target/victim, and the absence of capable guardianship. These theories differ, however, in how they view the behaviors that put people at “risk” for victimization. Where lifestyle theory conceives of risk in probab...

Lifestyle and routine activity theories both view victimization through the lens of the convergence a motivated offender, an attractive target/victim, and the absence of capable guardianship. These theories differ, however, in how they view the behaviors that put people at “risk” for victimization. Where lifestyle theory conceives of risk in probab...

This study takes stock of empirical research examining the relationship between gang membership and offending by subjecting this large body of work to a meta-analysis. Multilevel modeling is used to determine the overall mean effect size of this relationship based on 1,649 effect size estimates drawn from 179 empirical studies and 107 independent d...

This study identifies the factors related to mental health service use among children of incarcerated mothers. Data on 700 children collected from a diverse sample of mothers in Arizona are used, and a two-stage probit model with sample selection is estimated to assess the various child, mother, and caregiver characteristics associated with childre...

In this paper we advance the idea that getting arrested amounts to “failing at crime.” And akin to the notion of the generality of deviance—where those who engage in any given form of criminal behavior are also likely to engage in a wide array of other problematic behaviors—we examine whether failing at crime (getting arrested) is associated with o...

Objectives The present study addresses whether unique or general processes lead to victimization across gendered pathways to crime. Specifically, the effects of low self-control and risky lifestyles—specified as various forms of offending and substance abuse—on violent victimization across developmental typologies for both men and women are examine...

Objective: To assess how prosocial attachments to school and family may diminish the effects of violent victimization during adolescence on adverse outcomes in adulthood. Study design: We analyzed secondary data on 13,555 participants from waves 1 (1994-1995) and 3 (2001-2002) of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, a nationally...

Drawing from the inequality and crime, racial invariance, and Latino paradox literatures, the effects of inequality on youth reoffending are examined. Specifically, hierarchical logistic regression models are estimated to determine: (1) whether racial and ethnic inequality have similar contextual effects on the continued delinquent behavior of at-r...

Objectives Drawing from lifestyle-routine activity and self-control perspectives, the causal mechanisms responsible for repeat victimization are explored. Specifically, the present study investigates: (1) the extent to which self-control influences the changes victims make to their risky lifestyles following victimization, and (2) whether the failu...

A consequential development in victimization theory and research was the idea that individuals with low self‐control self‐select into the various risky behaviors that may ultimately result in their victimization. To establish the empirical status of the self‐control–victimization link, we subjected this body of work to a meta‐analysis. Our multilev...

Objectives Drawing from general strain and self-control perspectives, the role of maladaptive coping (i.e., substance use) in the causal pathway between victimization and offending is explored. Specifically, the present study investigates: (1) the extent to which self-control influences substance use in response to victimization, and (2) whether vi...

High rates of imprisonment among American men and women have motivated recent research on the well-being of children of incarcerated parents. Despite advances in the literature, little is known regarding the mental health status of children who experience maternal relative to paternal incarceration. Accordingly, we examine whether there are differe...

While policy makers have long extolled the benefits of incarceration, criminologists have expended considerable effort demonstrating the harmful collateral consequences of incarceration. Sampson (2011) recently challenged researchers to move beyond this dichotomy and to assess the “social ledger” of incarceration, where both the potential benefits an...