Positive Caregiving Styles Attenuating Effects of Cumulative Trauma Among Youth Who Commit Sexual Crimes

Attachment Theory and Sexual Offending: Making the Connection

PURPOSE OF REVIEW

The purpose of this review is to discuss how attachment theory can be applied to explain sexual violence. Specifically, it discusses how the development of certain risk factors contributes to these behaviors and how attachment-based models can be used to address this issue through prevention and therapeutic interventions.

RECENT FINDINGS

Recent research demonstrates that individuals who commit sexual offenses have higher rates of insecure attachment styles and that these styles are associated with a number of criminogenic risk factors associated with sexual offending. Such risk factors include cognitive processing difficulties, affect dysregulation, and challenges in interpersonal relationships, among others. Fortunately, treatment interventions have been shown to foster more secure attachment styles and reduce these risk factors. Attachment theory is a viable theory to both understand and intervene with those who have committed sexual violence to reduce the risk factors associated with sexual violence.

Symptoms of Posttraumatic Stress and Sexual Concerns: The Intermediary Effects of Executive Functioning on Profiles of Youth Who Have Sexually Harmed

There are demonstrated links in the general population between developmental adversity, associated trauma symptoms, and executive functioning difficulties in children and youth. However, research on links among these indicators and their relationship to antisocial behavior more broadly in samples of youth who have sexually harmed is only beginning to emerge. Some research indicates that intermediary factors like sexual concerns may be critical in understanding this population. This study explored relationships between trauma symptoms, sexual concerns, executive functioning, and their relationship to non-sexual delinquency in a sample of 196 youth who committed sexual harm. Structural equation modeling revealed numerous direct and indirect effects on the path to delinquency and that executive functioning plays a key role among those with serious sexual concerns. The results are contextualized and implications are discussed.

Adverse childhood experiences among justice-involved youth: Data-driven recommendations for action using the sequential intercept model

Justice-involved youth experience high rates of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), placing them in great need of behavioral health treatment and risk for continued justice involvement. Policymakers, government agencies, and professionals working with justice-involved youth have called for trauma-informed juvenile justice reform. Yet, there is currently no available review of the literature on ACEs and their impact on justice-involved youths' psychological, legal, and related (e.g., academic) outcomes to rigorously guide such reform efforts. The current systematic scoping review synthesizes existing literature related to the impact of ACEs on justice-involved youth and offers recommendations for data-driven intervention along the Sequential Intercept Model, which describes five different points of justice system contact (i.e., first arrest, court diversion, detention, and community supervision) in which there is opportunity to intervene and improve youth behavioral health, legal, and associated outcomes. Eight unique studies were included in 40 articles examining ACEs among justice-involved youth; 38% were longitudinal or prospective analyses and none were intervention studies. Studies included delinquency (e.g., recidivism; n = 5), psychiatric (n = 4), substance use (n = 3), and other (n = 2; e.g., academic, pregnancy) outcomes, documenting high prevalence of ACEs and significant associations between ACEs and a variety of outcomes. Implications for clinical services (e.g., targeting youth dysregulation and aggression), agency context (e.g., training police officers in trauma-responsive practices), and system-level changes (e.g., intervening at the time of first ACE documentation such as parent's arrest) are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).