ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the victim–offender overlap for victimization and distinguishes between routine activities and lifestyle theory. Situational theories of victimization and crime, sometimes referred to as opportunity or environmental theories, emphasize the intersection between the victim, offender, and environmental or situational characteristics of crime. Within the social interactionist perspective, emphasis is focused on the interaction between a perpetrator and victim to explain violence and victimization. The chapter explains the role of peers, parents, and neighborhood context in relation to victimization. The life-course perspective emerged in criminological studies in the 1990s, focusing specifically on understanding the development of criminal behaviors over time. Thus far, there has been growing interest among criminology researchers as to why individuals begin, continue, and desist from offending. The general theory of crime is one of the perspectives of life course theory, while the other theory is known as age-graded informal social control.
