Machteld Hoeve Larkin S. McReynolds, Gail A. Wasserman Cary McMillan
First Published January 24, 2013
Criminal Justice and Behavior
The authors conducted secondary data analyses on mental health assessment and offense history data for 700 juveniles referred to juvenile justice agencies in Alabama (probation and detention). Multiple regression analysis was applied to predict subsequent offense severity by disorder profile, adjusting for prior offense severity and background variables. Juveniles with a substance use disorder with or without co-occurring disorders were at greater risk for escalations in offense seriousness over time. Early in juvenile justice system contact, juveniles should get effective treatment for substance use to prevent offending escalation.
KEVIN M. BEAVER
Criminal Justice and Behavior
There is a great deal of evidence indicating that psychopathy and psychopathic traits represent some of the strongest corre- lates to serious violent criminal behavior. As a result, there has been a recent surge of behavioral genetic studies examining the genetic and environmental factors that may be related to the development of psychopathy. The current study extends this line of research by analyzing a sample of kinship pairs from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to estimate the extent to which genetic factors relate to measures of psychopathic personality traits created from the five factor model. Moreover, the authors also test for a series of gene–environment correlations between genetic risk for psychopathic personal- ity traits and measures of parental negativity. The results of the analyses revealed that genetic factors explained between .37 and .44 of the variance in measures of psychopathy. Additional statistical models indicated the presence of gene–environment correlations between parental negativity and genetic risk for psychopathic personality traits.
Jodi Lane, Kathleen A. Fox
First Published January 24, 2013
Criminal Justice and Behavior
The current study examines the impact of perceived risk and fear of sexual assault on male and female offenders’ fear of (a) property crime, (b) violent crime, and (c) gang crime. Results indicate that perceived risk of victimization and fear of sexual assault are significantly associated with fear of property, violent, and gang crime among the full sample and among both men and women. Confirming results of prior research, perceived risk of victimization is a stronger predictor of property, violent, and gang fear among men. Fear of sexual assault emerged as a stronger predictor of fear of property, violent, and gang crime among women, confirming Ferraro’s shadow of sexual assault thesis.
Criminal Behavior by 
