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.

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Self-control and psychopathy are prominent general theories of antisociality that, although present a very similar type of individual, have not often been studied in tandem, and few studies have conducted a head-to-head test of their association with serious delinquency and youth violence. Using a near census of institutionalized delinquents from Missouri, the current study found that both low self-control and psychopathy were significantly associated with various forms of delinquency and severe/chronic delinquency as measured by 90th percentile on the distribution. However, low selfcontrol was associated with more forms of delinquency, and victimization and youth with the lowest levels of self-control were at greatest risk for pathological delinquency relative to those with the most psychopathic personality. Both self-control and psychopathy are essential for understanding the most severe variants of delinquency, and more head-to-head tests are encouraged to assess the strength of criminological theories.

The versatility/specialization debate in criminology has important theoretical, research, and juvenile/criminal justice ramifications. Although offenders are mostly versatile, there is important evidence of specialization, but much of this evidence is derived from highly technical statistical approaches. Drawing on data from a cohort of serious delinquents committed to the California Youth Authority, logistic regression models revealed robust evidence for criminal specialization net the effects of behavioral and demographic controls. Prior homicide was associated with a 1,467% increased likelihood of being currently adjudicated for a homicide offense. Similar prior–current involvement in robbery (294% increased likelihood), aggravated assault (200%), burglary (148%), and drug sales (736%) was found. Logistic regression with odds ratios provides intuitive, valuable estimates of specialization in offending whereby prior involvement in a specific form of delinquency dramatically increases the likelihood of current involvement in the same form of crime.