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.

The maltreatment-offending relationship has been well elucidated. Less examined are protective factors that effectively serve to mitigate offending among ACE-exposed youth. The current study examines whether cumulative positive childhood experiences (PCEs) are themselves associated with a reduction in recidivism among juvenile justice-involved adolescents, and the ability of cumulative PCE to moderate the ACE-recidivism relationship. Results demonstrate, among over 28,000 juvenile offenders, high ACE scores were associated with increased reoffending, and high PCE scores were associated with decreased recidivism, as measured by both rearrest and reconviction. Further, among juveniles with four or more ACEs who have six or more PCEs, reconviction was 23% lower and rearrest 22% lower when compared to those youth with four or more ACEs and less than six PCEs, controlling for a host of demographic and criminal history measures. Findings indicate that among youth with high PCE scores the positive association between ACEs and recidivism is no longer significant. Implications for juvenile justice practice and policy are discussed.

Low empathy has been implicated in antisocial, aggressive, and criminal behavior, especially among adolescents. Less understood is the extent to which empathy is amenable to treatment, and whether an improvement in empathy can mitigate the deleterious effects of known risk factors, such as childhood maltreatment. A sample of 11,000 serious juvenile offenders in long-term residential placement is leveraged to examine whether over cumulative traumatic exposure, measured by the adverse childhood experience (ACE) score, is associated with the initial level of empathy at admission to a residential program, and whether changes in empathy during treatment moderate the impact of ACEs on juvenile recidivism. Results show youth with higher ACE scores have less empathy at admission and both ACEs and empathy predict recidivism. Most importantly, large gains in empathy are able to dampen the effect of ACEs on recidivism.

Research Summary: The Florida Department of Juvenile Justice has implemented a process to evaluate the treatment quality of interventions provided statewide in all long‐term residential programs. In the current study, we examine the predictive validity of this treatment quality component in the prediction of recidivism of youth ( N = 2,397) who completed juvenile justice residential programs from July 1, 2013 to June 30, 2014. We use hierarchical linear modeling to assess the effects of treatment quality (as youth are nested within programs), controlling for demographic and criminal history factors. The results indicate that higher average treatment quality scores of interventions received within a residential program decreased the likelihood of subsequent arrest, conviction, and reincarceration, whereas the highest treatment quality score of any specific intervention provided within the program decreased the odds of reincarceration only. Policy Implications: In this study, we confirm the importance of fidelity and implementation quality in the provision of crime prevention treatment interventions to serious, deep‐end juvenile offenders. Additionally, our results shed light on the ability of a juvenile justice agency to measure treatment quality in a substantively meaningful way with the use of limited additional resources. The services provided to keep communities safe, prevent future offending, and rehabilitate juvenile offenders must be held accountable for producing such outcomes, and one method of measuring such compliance is to evaluate the quality of the interventions with respect to staff training, fidelity adherence, evaluation, and corrective action processes.

Best practices in juvenile justice call for the individualized matching of services to assessed dynamic risk factors, with services delivered at sufficient dosage. However, prior work has largely ignored whether this recipe for recidivism reduction is as effective for adolescents with extensive traumatic exposure as it is for those without. The current study leverages a statewide sample of 1,666 juveniles released from residential placement (84.6% male, 59.8% Black, 11.9% Hispanic). We examine the associations of individual-level service matching and achieving dosage targets established by Lipsey’s Standardized Program Evaluation Protocol (SPEP) during residential placement with changes in dynamic risk during placement and recidivism post-release among juveniles with extensive adverse childhood experiences (ACE) exposure and those without. Results demonstrate heightened traumatic exposure is related to smaller reductions in dynamic risk and to an increased probability of reoffending, but that youth receiving matched services coupled with adequate dosage leads to greater treatment progress (dynamic risk reduction) and lower recidivism post-release for both low-ACE and high-ACE youth. Implications for juvenile justice practice and policy are discussed.