Impact of Gangs on Victimization at School
This study also examined the importance of gang presence with respect to overall victimization rates in schools. Although NCVS victimization data could not be linked with the SCS data by geographical area, correlations between respondent reports of victimization at school, at home, and elsewhere were examined. If the risk of victimization at school is due to the dangerousness of the areas in which schools are located, then the risk at home and in the student's neighborhood should be highly correlated with the risk at school. If risk in these other domains is not highly correlated with victimization at school, then the school environment must make a unique contribution to the risk of victimization. Table 9 shows a significant correlation of violent and property-related victimization at school, at home, and in other places; however, the correlation coefficients are not large.5 Thus, this analysis suggests that the school environment makes a unique contribution to the criminal victimization of adolescents. This observation, together with other findings reported in this Bulletin, suggests that gang presence is an important contributor to overall levels of student victimization at school.
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