Adverse Childhood Experiences and Forensic Typologies: Getting Specific about Trauma among Institutionalized Youth.

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are linked to various conduct and behavior problems within juvenile delinquents, but fewer studies focused on these associations among specific forensic typologies of offending. Utilizing data from 3382 institutionalized delinquents in Texas, logistic regression models indicated multiple associations between ACEs and forensic typologies in both adjusted and unadjusted models, with sexual abuse and physical abuse emerging as the most consistent and robust predictors. Supplemental sensitivity models confirmed the associations between sexual abuse and physical abuse among youth who fit multiple forensic typologies. Models fared poorly at identifying youth who are engaged in fire setting. Implications for total and singular ACEs are discussed, along with how those relate to more clinically meaningful, forensic forms of juvenile delinquency.

Working on local time: Testing the job-demand-control-support model of stress with jail officers.

PURPOSE: The demands and consequences of the correctional workplace are well-documented, but researchers have yet to examine the correlates of work stress among a large multi-facility sample of jail officers. We framed our inquiry within the Job Demand-Control-Support model that has guided researchers in parallel studies of work stress among prison officers. METHOD: Data on officers' background characteristics, job demands, work-related control or autonomy, support from coworkers or family members, safety risks, and work-related stress were examined across 1380 officers working in 19 jails. RESULTS: Unreasonable workloads, perceptions of insufficient staff, role problems, less control or autonomy, a lack of support at work or home, and exposure to violence were associated with greater stress among jail officers. Jails with characteristics that threatened order and security-having more inmates per officer and greater levels of inmate violence-had higher levels of stress among officer workforces. CONCLUSIONS: Findings largely support research on work stress among prison officers and may inform efforts to reduce stress and improve quality of life among jail and prison personnel. Delegating appropriate workloads, the maintenance of control, social supports, and the reduction of safety risks are all important for reducing work stress among jail officers.

Come and Knock on Our Door: Offenders' Perspectives on Home Visits Through Ecological Theory.

The use of home visits has a long and storied history in the United States from different disciplines, such as nursing, prenatal mothers, young families, health promotion, and community corrections. Ecological theory explains how formal actors play a role in the promotion in the health field through home visits, but does not address community corrections home visits. Through the use of 30 semi-structured interviews, this research seeks to expand the understanding of ecological theory by capturing the perceptions of offenders sentenced to home visits conducted by a sheriff's office. The findings suggest the participants supported the home visits by formal agents and, in general, the home visits created an atmosphere of respect between the participants and sheriff's office personnel. This study creates the context for future research to understand the role of formal agents in recidivism and evaluate the efficacy of home visits by community corrections agencies.

Adverse Childhood Experiences, Commitment Offense, and Race/Ethnicity: Are the Effects Crime-, Race-, and Ethnicity-Specific?

Adverse childhood experiences are associated with an array of health, psychiatric, and behavioral problems including antisocial behavior. Criminologists have recently utilized adverse childhood experiences as an organizing research framework and shown that adverse childhood experiences are associated with delinquency, violence, and more chronic/severe criminal careers. However, much less is known about adverse childhood experiences vis-à-vis specific forms of crime and whether the effects vary across race and ethnicity. Using a sample of 2520 male confined juvenile delinquents, the current study used epidemiological tables of odds (both unadjusted and adjusted for onset, total adjudications, and total out of home placements) to evaluate the significance of the number of adverse childhood experiences on commitment for homicide, sexual assault, and serious persons/property offending. The effects of adverse childhood experiences vary considerably across racial and ethnic groups and across offense types. Adverse childhood experiences are strongly and positively associated with sexual offending, but negatively associated with homicide and serious person/property offending. Differential effects of adverse childhood experiences were also seen among African Americans, Hispanics, and whites. Suggestions for future research to clarify the mechanisms by which adverse childhood experiences manifest in specific forms of criminal behavior are offered.

Does childhood sexual abuse victimization translate into juvenile sexual offending? New evidence.

The cycle of violence thesis posits that early exposure to maltreatment increases the likelihood of later maladaptive and antisocial behaviors. Childhood sexual abuse (CSA) specifically has been shown to increase the likelihood of sexual offending, although less is known about its linkages to other forms of crime. Based on data from 2,520 incarcerated male juvenile offenders from a large southern state, hierarchical logistic regression models suggested that CSA increased the likelihood of later sexual offending nearly sixfold (467% increase). However, CSA was associated with an 83% reduced likelihood of homicide offending and 68% reduced likelihood of serious person/property offending. These findings suggest further support for the cycle of violence where CSA promotes sexual offending but novel findings regarding the linkages between CSA and other forms of crime.

Not my fault: blame externalization is the psychopathic feature most associated with pathological delinquency among confined delinquents.

The association between psychopathy and crime is established, but the specific components of the personality disorders that most contribute to crime are largely unknown. Drawing on data from 723 confined delinquents in Missouri, the present study delved into the eight subscales of the Psychopathic Personality Inventory-Short Form to empirically assess the specific aspects of the disorder that are most responsible for explaining variation in career delinquency. Blame externalization emerged as the strongest predictor of career delinquency in ordinary least squares regression, logistic regression, and t-test models. Fearlessness and carefree nonplanfulness were also significant in all models. Other features of psychopathy, such as stress immunity, social potency, and coldheartedness were weakly and inconsistently predictive of career delinquency. Implications of these findings for the study of psychopathy and delinquent careers are discussed in this article.

Alias: lying to the police and pathological criminal behavior.

The use of aliases has been shown to be associated with antisocial behavior, but the empirical research on this topic is modest. The current study employs a multiple analytical approach to explore the association between aliases and career criminality in two large samples of adult offenders. We hypothesized that the use of aliases would not only be strongly associated with arrest history but this singular behavior would accurately classify a large proportion of habitual criminals. Results show that alias usage is robustly associated with career arrests net the effects of arrest onset, age, and sex in negative binomial regression models and was an excellent classifier (AUC = .82) of habitual criminality. Implications of the findings for forensic and criminal justice practitioners are offered.