Psychological Science Faculty Publications
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
12-18-2025
Abstract
This study examined whether patterns of maltreatment predicted reoffending among 5,194 justice-involved youth (JIY) from a large Texas juvenile probation department. Using latent class analysis on five maltreatment types (physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, neglect, and exposure to domestic violence), we empirically identified three classes: “Poly-victimization” (17.8%; high across all types), “Psychological Maltreatment” (15.3%; high emotional abuse and neglect), and “Low Maltreatment” (66.9%; low/moderate across types). JIY in the “Poly-victimization” and “Psychological Maltreatment” classes were more likely to engage in general and violent reoffending within 1 year controlling for covariates. These findings highlight the varying importance of different maltreatment patterns and underscore the need to prioritize interventions for JIY with complex maltreatment histories in order to reduce future offending.
Recommended Citation
Li, N., Shelton, M., & Grigorenko, E. L. (2025). Child Maltreatment and Recidivism: Do Maltreatment Patterns Influence General and Violent Reoffending?. Crime & Delinquency, 00111287251398033. https://doi.org/10.1177/00111287251398033
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Publication Title
Crime & Delinquency
DOI
10.1177/00111287251398033
Comments
© The Author(s) 2025. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).