TY - JOUR
T1 - Adverse childhood experiences, commitment offense, and race/ethnicity
T2 - Are the effects crime-, race-, and ethnicity-specific?
AU - Delisi, Matt
AU - Alcala, Justin
AU - Kusow, Abdi
AU - Hochstetler, Andy
AU - Heirigs, Mark H.
AU - Caudill, Jonathan W.
AU - Trulson, Chad R.
AU - Baglivio, Michael T.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
PY - 2017/3/22
Y1 - 2017/3/22
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
KW - Adverse childhood experiences
KW - Crime
KW - Delinquency
KW - Ethnicity
KW - Juvenile justice
KW - Race
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85016100200&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.3390/ijerph14030331
DO - 10.3390/ijerph14030331
M3 - Article
C2 - 28327508
AN - SCOPUS:85016100200
SN - 1661-7827
VL - 14
JO - International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
JF - International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
IS - 3
M1 - 331
ER -