Reframing repeat violence: A critical life-course perspective

Abstract This article advances a critical life-course perspective on repeat violence, drawing on qualitative interviews with people with lived experience and community stakeholders. While repeat violent victimization is often approached as a linear series of discrete incidents, the analysis reframes repeat violence as a patterned and relational process shaped by inequality and institutional response. A qualitative typology of three configurations—‘Unsettled Lives’, ‘Mutual Violence’ and ‘Intermittent Victimization’—illustrates how different forms of violence are experienced, interpreted and carried forward throughout the life course. Across these configurations, institutional responses frequently compound harm, contributing to continued exposure and constrained access to support. The article extends life-course criminology by shifting analytic attention from event-based trajectories towards the relational configurations through which cumulative harm unfolds.