The Relationship between Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) and Juvenile Offending Trajectories in a Juvenile Offender Sample

Abstract

• Examines the relationship between adverse childhood experiences and offending patterns in adjudicated juvenile offenders.

• Methods: Uses data from 64,000 adjudicated juvenile offenders in Florida, employing Semi-Parametric Group-Based Method (SPGM) to identify latent groups of offending trajectories from ages 7 to 17. Multinomial logistic regression was used to examine which measures, including the ACE score, distinguished between trajectory groups.

• Results: Identifies five latent trajectory offending groups, with increased exposure to ACE distinguishing early-onset and chronic offending.

• Conclusions: Childhood maltreatment, measured by the ACE score, influences official offending trajectories.

Introduction

• The age-crime curve shows crime rising in early adolescence, peaking around age 17, and declining thereafter.

• Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) may influence the age/crime relationship.

• This study considers the influence of a youth’s home environment on longitudinal offending patterns, drawing from Moffitt’s (1993) developmental taxonomy and DeLisi and Vaughn’s (2014) temperament-based theory.

• Individual traumas or abuses (neglect, physical abuse) are important correlates of antisocial behavior and victimization.

• Widom’s research shows children exposed to violence are at increased risk of perpetrating violence in later life.

• Childhood maltreatment increases the risk of later criminality by approximately 50% (Caspi et al., 2002).

• ACEs: Ten experiences of emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional neglect, physical neglect, domestic violence toward the youth’s mother, household substance abuse, household mental illness, parental separation/divorce, and household member with a history of jail/imprisonment.

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE)

• Proximal effects of childhood trauma: increased risk for delinquency, fighting, dating violence, carrying a weapon, substance use, conduct disorders, suicidal ideation and attempts (Evans-Chase, 2014).

• 75%-93% of youth entering the juvenile justice system have experienced some type of trauma, compared to 25%-34% of the general population.

• The ACE score is the sum of ten exposures, each measured dichotomously.

• Prior work has found types of childhood abuse and neglect are common, highly interrelated, and exert a powerful cumulative effect on human development.

• The presence of a given ACE increases the odds of having any other additional ACE by an average of 2.3 times, and up to 1,286 times for those without the given ACE (Baglivio & Epps, 2015).

• ACEs should not be assumed to be isolated exposures with unique effects.

• Negative short- and long-term influences of ACEs on health and behaviors is better conceptualized and examined as a cumulative, dose–response relationship.

• Higher ACE scores were initially linked to increases in leading causes of death in adulthood (including heart disease, cancer, chronic lung disease, skeletal fractures, and liver disease), with the odds of experiencing these types of deaths in adulthood roughly 12 times higher for individuals who experienced four or more ACEs compared to those without such exposure (Felitti et al., 1998).

• Short-term negative outcomes implicated by higher ACE scores include an increase in the odds of smoking, heavy drinking, intravenous drug use, morbid obesity, incarceration, violence perpetration, and poor educational and employment outcomes (Bellis, Lowey, Leckenby, Hughes, & Harrison, 2014).

• Sexual promiscuity, teenage pregnancy, and intercourse prior to age 15 have also been linked to higher ACE scores (Hillis, Anda, Felitti, & Marchbanks, 2001; Hillis et al., 2004).

• Juvenile offenders have ACE prevalence rates 3 times higher, and are 13 times less likely to have no ACE exposure and 4 times more likely to have ACE scores of four or above, compared to the original privately-insured ACE Study adults.

• Juvenile offenders with higher ACEs have a greater likelihood of being assessed as high risk to re-offend on a validated risk assessment and a greater likelihood of being classified as serious, violent, and chronic (SVC) offenders by age 18.

• Concentrated disadvantage and affluence affect ACE exposure.

Effects of Trauma on Neurodevelopment

• The ACE score is consistent with the latest understanding of the effects of traumatic stress on neurodevelopment.

• Dose-response relationship has been identified between ACEs with negative neurological consequences, such as chromosome damage (Shalev et al., 2013) and functional changes to the developing brain.

• Child maltreatment during critical periods can disrupt brain development and lead to neurobiological deficits.

• Chronic stress, such as that suggested by multiple ACE exposures, has been found to impair brain development (Twardosz & Lutzker, 2010).

• Implications of traumatic exposure on the development of the prefrontal cortex and pathways between the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala have been uncovered.

• Changes in prefrontal maturation may impact self-regulatory behavioral and emotional responses, such as delinquency, interpersonal violence, drug and alcohol use, and suicidal or self-mutilating behaviors.

Moffitt’s Developmental Taxonomy

• Individuals on the LCP-pathway are hypothesized to be subject to serious neuropsychological problems or deficits that interact with disadvantaged and/or criminogenic environments during infancy and early childhood.

• LCPs, compared to ALs, have been found to demonstrate a higher prevalence of “pathological” backgrounds, including inadequate parenting, neurocognitive problems, and behavioral problems during childhood (Moffitt, 2006; Moffitt & Caspi, 2001).

• Findings of higher levels of neurobiological adversity in childhood-onset offenders has been replicated by others (Fairchild, Van Goozen, Calder, & Goodyer, 2013).

• Moffitt contends that a snowball effect occurs, in which antisocial involvement leads to a condition in which the “histories and traits of life-course-persistents have foreclosed their options, entrenching them in the antisocial path” (Moffitt, 1993:691).

• The at-risk infant (based on neurological deficits) presents as more “difficult” in terms of irritability, impulsivity, delay in reaching pertinent developmental milestones (walking, talking, reading, etc.), slow learning, and difficultly expressing themselves, among others.

• Vulnerable children are more likely born into maladaptive, dysfunctional environments (Moffitt, 1993).

• LCP antisocial behavior begins early in the life course, is manifested in age-appropriate ways throughout the life course, including aggression and violence, and also extends beyond the antisocial realm to include adverse outcomes in non-crime domains (Caspi & Moffitt, 1995; Moffitt, 1993; Moffitt & Caspi, 2001; Piquero et al., 2007).

• The “juxtaposition of a vulnerable and difficult infant with an adverse rearing context initiates risk” for LCP offending (1993:106).

• A transactional relationship between youth and his/her contextual reality exists in which causal and countercyclical mechanisms are linked to either increasingly or decreasingly probable antisocial outcomes (Duke et al., 2010).

DeLisi and Vaughn’s Temperament-based Theory

• DeLisi and Vaughn’s perspective focuses not just on understanding antisocial involvement, but also the potentially negative interactions that children with self-regulation deficits have with the criminal justice system.

• Children are not exposed to ACE equally within a family or home environment, the most antisocial traits evoke ACEs from parents, caregivers, or adults.

• Biological vulnerabilities (i.e., genotype and neural substrates) as well as familial, peer, school, and neighborhood relationships and interactions influence the development of the higher order construct of temperament, which is comprised of effortful control (impulsivity, low conscientiousness, boldness) and negative emotionality (anger, thin-skinned, hostility).

• Deficits in temperament increase the likelihood of proximal outcomes, such as aggression, substance misuse, risky sexual behavior, and victimization, as well as indirectly, to distal outcomes such as criminal justice system involvement and interactions with criminal justice personnel.

Trauma and Trajectories

• Childhood-onset offenders were more likely to report childhood maltreatment, mental health, angry-irritableness, and substance abuse problems (Hoeve et al., 2014).

• Youth with trauma exposure were more likely to have mental health problems, even after controlling for ethnicity and age (Hoeve et al., 2014).

• Trauma prevalence was higher in early-onset youth, the moderation effect between trauma and mental health problems was stronger in the adolescent-onset group.

• Emotional abuse and physical abuse were not significant upon inclusion of mental health problems in the prediction of child-onset offending

• Trauma was found to be associated with comorbid internalizing disorders (such as depression and anxiety) and disruptive behavior disorders (such as conduct disorder and ADHD), while, in contrast, age of onset was unrelated to comorbidity.

• Moderate to severe delinquents were more likely to be raised by neglectful families (poor supervision, physical punishment) than minor or non-delinquents, and serious persisting delinquents were more likely to be raised by authoritarian families than were non-delinquents.

• An earlier analysis of males in the Pittsburgh Youth Study considered the relationship between parenting styles and distinct offending trajectories (Hoeve et al., 2008).

• Early age of onset and chronic antisocial behavior are argued to differ across specific risk factors from adolescent/late-onset offenders.

• Moffitt has implicated male gender, hyperactivity (ADHD), impulsivity, poor verbal and executive functions, inconsistent parental supervision/discipline, mental health problems, aggression (including attributing harmful intent to others’ intentions), behavioral problems at school and learning disabilities, social skill deficits, substance abuse, and adverse home environments (including child abuse and neglect) to heighten the risk for early onset, LCP-styles of offending.

Current Study

• The current study examines the effect of the childhood trauma, using the ACE score composite, on the offending trajectories of a large sample of adjudicated male and female juvenile offenders from the State of Florida.

Data

• Data were drawn from the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice (FDJJ) archival data records.

• Sample: 64,329 unduplicated youth who were assessed with the PACT Full Assessment and had turned 18 between January 1, 2007, and December 31, 2012.

• The C-PACT is the validated risk/needs assessment administered to all juveniles arrested in Florida.

Measures

Official Offending

• Every time a youth (under 18 years of age) is arrested in Florida information is required and entered into the JJIS database.

• The official offending measure is dichotomous and does not measure frequency of arrests during a given age, only whether or not the youth was arrested.

ACE Score

• C-PACT items were used to create ACE scores for each youth.

• Each exposure was binary (yes/no) and exposures were summed for a cumulative ACE score ranging from 0 (unexposed to any) to 10 (exposed to all ten categories).

Analytic Strategy

• First, aggregate official offending curves for the full sample (n = 64,329) by coding a dichotomous yes/no for whether each youth was arrested at each age from 7-17.

• Next, Semi-Parametric Group-Based Method (SPGM) to identify different latent groups of official offending trajectories based on individual variation over time.

• Multinomial logistic regression was used to examine which measures distinguished between trajectory groups.

Results

Aggregate Offending Curves

• It is immediately apparent that a larger proportion of youth who have endured a high number of ACEs were arrested earlier on in life, and that a larger proportion of youth with higher ACE scores were arrested at every age.

Official Juvenile Offending Trajectories

• The optimum model included five groups with some commencing offending in their early to mid teens, some in their later teens, some in their early years and some with persistent offending throughout their adolescence.

Discussion

• Five key findings emerged from our analysis.

  • First, in the full sample, a higher number of ACEs was associated with an earlier age at first arrest and further that higher ACE scores were associated with a greater likelihood of arrest from childhood through late adolescence.

  • Second, our trajectory analysis yielded five distinct groups of offenders who displayed significant heterogeneity in their offending patterns through age 17.

  • These were (1) mid-to-early onset who later desist, (2) late starters, (3) mid-to-late starters who begin to desist, (4) early starters, and (5) mid-to-early starters.

  • Third, when we used the ACE and relevant risk factors to distinguish between the offending trajectories we found a dose-response relationship in that a higher number of ACEs was indeed a significant predictor of more chronic styles of offending, a pattern that held across groups as well as with controls for many risk factors—most of which operated as expected.

  • Fourth, and contrary to previous research (Hoeve et al., 2014), inclusion of mental health and substance use risks did not eliminate the significant adverse childhood experience effect.

  • Lastly, the analyses revealed that antisocial peers was an important distinguishing feature of the desistance and escalation trajectories (Wiesner & Capaldi, 2003), but importantly antisocial peers was not very important in predicting membership in the early start trajectory, a result consistent with Moffitt’s taxonomy that early onset/LCP offenders do not need antisocial peers to encourage their offending.

Limitations

• The ACE measure only considers the experience of ten specific events, it does not measure the severity or frequency of abuse.

• The Florida data do not contain any information related to youth genetic coding/genotype.

• the data are based only on information from the State of Florida, we do not have any information on youth who moved out of the state nor information about their out-of-state arrests.

• Future research should consider a more expansive data collection, rec- ognizing the great difficulty in accessing juvenile offending records across jurisdictions.

Policy Implications

• The juvenile justice system may provide services to youth while they are being detained and/or treated in the system.

• Providing services to these youth with respect to coping mechanisms and/or associated cognitive and emotional therapies would be useful.

• The finding of increased ACE exposure for early-onset youth adds a new metric to a growing body of empirical work regarding dysfunction across family, temperament, and self-regulatory deficits of the most early-onset, per- sistent offenders found in prior work.

• The analyses re- vealed that antisocial peers was an important distinguishing feature of the desistance and escalation trajectories.