Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Understanding The Victim-Offender Overlap: An Exploratory Study, Christine Kay Hannis

MSU Graduate Theses

The strong and consistent relationship between criminal involvement and victimization is one of the most persistent documented findings within criminological research. The current problem associated with this relationship involves the lack of studies on the nature and extent of why this overlap exists, with even less research focusing on the perspectives of the offenders who identify themselves as victims. The current study attempts to better understand the victim-offender overlap by analyzing the experiences of criminal offenders who also identify as victims of crime, within the context of various theoretical perspectives. Various themes emerge to elaborate on the nature of the …