A Prospective Examination of Criminal Career Trajectories in Abused and Neglected Males and Females Followed Up into Middle Adulthood

Objectives

To examine the extent to which there are differences in the developmental course of offending among individuals with maltreatment histories, compared to nonmaltreated controls, and whether these patterns vary for males and females.

Methods

This paper uses data from a longitudinal study in which abused and neglected children (N = 908) were matched with non-maltreated children (N = 667) and followed prospectively into adulthood. Group-based trajectory modeling was conducted using official criminal history records collected through mean age 51. Patterns of criminal offending were first considered for the whole sample, with abuse status and sex included as time-stable covariates, and then separately by subgroup (control females, maltreated females, control males and maltreated males).

Results

Analyses revealed that a three-group model provided the best fit (nonoffenders, low-level chronic offenders, mid-level chronic offenders) for the overall sample. Child maltreatment and sex were significant predictors, with offenders more likely to be male and abused/neglected, compared to non-offenders. Separate analyses for the four subgroups revealed some similarities across groups in the characterization of offending trajectories, although trajectories for abused/neglected females differed significantly from trajectories for control females. Additional analyses suggest that desistance from offending may be largely a function of incapacitation due to early death, rather than imprisonment.

Conclusions

These new analyses provide evidence that child maltreatment affects patterns of offending and that there is an impact on females and males, although the impact differs by gender. Future research should build on this work by examining the mechanisms through which child maltreatment leads to differential patterns of offending throughout the life course.

     

Bilateral fractures of the coronoid processes: differential diagnosis of intra-oral gunshot trauma and scavenging using a sheep crania model

Approximately half of the skeleton of an adult male (minus the cranium) was found in a forested part of Greater Vancouver, Canada, in August 2000 by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). Authorities ruled the death as suicide. The only compelling signs of perimortem trauma were symmetrically fractured coronoid processes of the mandible, which can be attributed to a gunshot in the mouth. However, the remains had also been scavenged by canids, raising a problem in differential diagnosis. Could canid scavenging produce bilateral fracturing of the mandible indistinguishable from gunshot wounds to the mouth? We found that canid scavengers could not mimic the type of damage to the mandible caused by intra-oral gunshot wounding using a sheep model (n = 20). Bilateral fracturing of the coronoid processes was found to be characteristic of intra-oral gunshot wounding, while canid scavengers typically ignore this region of the mandible.