Criminogenic Needs as Intervening Factors in the Relation Between Insecure Attachments and Youth Sexual Violence
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-13-2019
Publication Title
Sexual Abuse
Volume
32
Issue
3
First page number:
247
Last page number:
272
Abstract
There is a strong theoretical and research base demonstrating the link between attachment styles and adolescent sexual offending. However, this relationship may be best explained by deficit-based mediational pathways including criminogenic needs such as emotional or affect regulation and callousness. Grady, Levenson, and Bolder propose a framework that details criminogenic needs as intermediary variables in the attachment–sexual offending relationship. Using data on adolescents adjudicated of sexual and nonsexual crimes in a Western state (N = 200), two structural equation models (SEM) tested direct and indirect relationships between ambivalent and avoidant attachment styles (in separate models), dysregulation including cognitive and behavioral transitions, emotional control, and inhibited/impulsive behaviors, callousness, delinquency, and offending type (sexual or nonsexual offending). Results revealed statistically significant direct pathways between variables of interest and a multimediational effect of dysregulation and callousness in the relationship between insecure attachments and sexual offending. Treatment, policy, and research implications are discussed.
Keywords
Juvenile sex offenders; Delinquency; Antisocial behavior
Disciplines
Criminology and Criminal Justice | Legal Studies | Social and Behavioral Sciences
Language
English
Repository Citation
Yoder, J.,
Grady, M. D.,
Brown, A.,
Dillard, R.
(2019).
Criminogenic Needs as Intervening Factors in the Relation Between Insecure Attachments and Youth Sexual Violence.
Sexual Abuse, 32(3),
247-272.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1079063218821108
