Child Abuse and Neglect and Psychiatric Disorders in Violent and Non-Violent Female Offenders

• In Event: Substance Abuse, Violent Female Offenders, and Antisocial Personality Disorder in Abused and Neglected Children Followed Up into Adulthood

Abstract

Although the percentage of crimes committed by females has increased over the last 20 years in the United States, most research focuses on crimes by men. This presentation describes an examination of the extent to which childhood maltreatment predicts violent and non-violent offending in females and the role of a number of psychiatric disorders. Girls with substantiated cases of physical and sexual abuse and neglect were matched with non-maltreated girls on the basis of age, race, and approximate family socioeconomic class and followed prospectively into adulthood (N = 582). Information was obtained from official arrest records and participant responses to a standardized structured psychiatric interview. Adult women with a history of childhood physical abuse, sexual abuse, and neglect were at increased risk for having an arrest, but not specifically an arrest for violence. Women arrested for a violent crime tended to have the highest percentage of psychiatric disorders, followed by non-violent offenders, and then non-offenders. Post-traumatic stress disorder was the only psychiatric disorder to distinguish women arrested for a violent crime. The temporal sequence of PTSD and onset of violence was also examined. Implications of these findings will be discussed.

Authors

• Nicole M. Trauffer, The Graduate Center, John Jay College / CUNY

• Cathy Spatz Widom, The Graduate Center, John Jay College / CUNY