Much empirical support of self-control theory is based on the 24-item scale conceptualized by Grasmick and his colleagues. This study examined the dimensionality of the scale. Exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analyses, and a structural equation model (SEM) produced results that are discordant with much prior research. The Grasmick et al. scale was not unidimensional, more complex theoretical iterations failed to meet most goodness-of-fit statistics, and considerable refinement via modification indices was needed before a measurement model that fit the data could be found. Further refinement is required to justify it as the quintessential measure of self-control.

Prior research on the monetary costs of criminal careers has neglected to focus on homicide offenders and tended to minimize the public costs associated with crime. Drawing on expanded monetization estimates produced by Cohen and Piquero, this study assessed the monetary costs for five crimes (murder, rape, armed robbery, aggravated assault, and burglary) imposed by a sample of (n = 654) convicted and incarcerated murderers. The average cost per murder exceeded $17.25 million and the average murderer in the current sample posed costs approaching $24 million. The most violent and prolific offenders singly produced costs greater than $150–160 million in terms of victim costs, criminal justice costs, lost offender productivity, and public willingness-to-pay costs.

The importation model posits that inmate behavior is primarily an extension of the assorted antisocial behaviors that criminal offenders develop in the community. Persons involved in gangs are viewed as especially at‐risk for prison misconduct. Using the official infraction records of 831 male inmates sampled from the southwestern USA, this study explored the prison violence records of inmates involved in street gangs, prison gangs and both types of gangs vis‐à‐vis chronic offenders. Negative binomial regression models indicated that gang variables were significantly predictive of prison violence only in the full model when various types of gang membership (e.g. street, prison or both) were considered. Overall, the effects of gang membership were smaller than some of the risk factors related to chronic offending, such as history of violence and prior confinement, and other controls such as race. Although investigations of prison violence and misconduct are rightfully and importantly moving toward explanations that integrate importation, deprivation, and situational effects, we conclude that further specification of the importation model is needed.

The importation model is a venerable theoretical explanation for inmate misconduct but it has not been extended in nearly 50 years. The current study advances a life course importation model of inmate behavior where life events in childhood cascade to predict antisocial behavior during adolescence and misconduct occurring during periods of confinement. Based on data from 2,520 institutionalized male delinquents, ordinary least squares, logistic, and negative binomial regression models indicated that family background variables were largely predictive of multiple facets of delinquent careers. Negative binomial regression models of institutional misconduct indicated that proximal delinquent career variables were more consistently associated with misconduct than distal family background factors. Because institutional behavior can be understood as the importing of family deprivation experiences and chronic delinquency, the life course importation model is a useful conceptual framework to study crime over the life course, even including periods of confinement.

This study examines the effects of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) on the risk of internalizing or externalizing outcomes among juveniles. While myriad research has investigated the impacts of ACEs on internalizing and externalizing outcomes, it is unclear whether ACEs have a stronger link to one outcome over the other when controlling for other factors. Using a sample of 30,909 youth who exclusively exhibited internalizing (n = 1,030) or externalizing problems (n = 29,879), regression techniques and propensity score matching were utilized to evaluate the impact of each ACE on the risk of internalizing versus externalizing outcomes. Results indicate that the most pertinent factor for predicting externalized problems is emotional abuse. Household member incarceration, physical abuse, emotional neglect, and household violence or substance abuse also predicted externalizing outcomes. Sexual abuse was the only ACE predictive of internalizing, while physical neglect and parental mental illness did not have a correlation with either outcome.

Childhood maltreatment and inept parental disciplinary, attachment, and monitoring practices evidence a relationship with early and severe childhood and adolescent aggression and have figured prominently as causative factors in theoretical and empirical underpinnings of lifelong antisocial behavior. Abuse, neglect, and household dysfunction have been linked to both violent offending and higher scores on measures of dispositional tendencies associated with psychopathy. The current study incorporates these lines of research by examining a potential pathway by which cumulative adverse childhood experience exposure, rather than single exposures assessed independently, leads to chronic and serious juvenile offending. Specifically, we leverage a sample of 64,007 juvenile offenders who have aged out of the juvenile justice system to examine the extent to which the effects of traumatic exposure on age of onset (first arrest) as well as residential placement, total offenses, and serious, violent, and chronic offending up to age 18 are each mediated by psychopathic features. Results demonstrate that a substantial portion (37%–93%) of the effects of cumulative traumatic exposure on justice system outcomes is indirect, operating through these features, even after controlling for demographic and other criminogenic risk factors. Juvenile justice policy implications are discussed.