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

Abstract

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.

Adverse Childhood Experiences, Personality, and Crime: Distinct Associations among a High-Risk Sample of Institutionalized Youth

“…Second, the overall high prevalence rates of ACEs in the current high-risk sample of juveniles with and without previous offenses may have affected the results. Third, although serving as convenient way to consider the co-existence of multiple types of ACEs, a cumulative ACE score has also been criticized because it cannot account for the effects of specific patterns of ACEs (e.g., [4,63]). Fourth, compared to studies that emphasized the ACE-delinquency link in juvenile justice samples, only about one third of our high-risk sample had been convicted of criminal behavior before and after the assessment.…”