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

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