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“There Are Patterns To life…”: Adverse Childhood Experiences and Adolescent To Middle Adulthood Patterns of Self-Reported Offending

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Abstract

The study of life course patterns of offending, or criminal careers, offers particular insight into economic and social costs associated with offending, more broadly, as well as the need to prevent such costs. As such, a large literature is devoted to identifying various patterns of offending, as well as the risk/protective factors associated with these patterns to prevent their manifestation. Using data from the Rochester Youth Development Study (RYDS), this work first estimates adolescent to middle adulthood patterns of self-reported offending (ages 14–48) using group-based trajectory models (n = 873). Then, using mulinomial logistic regression models, it examines how adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), are individually, cumulatively, and conceptually (Dimensional Model of Adversity and Psychopathology; DMAP) related to and distinguish between the various, identified patterns of offending. Seven general patterns of self-reported offending emerged, including non-offending, chronic, and late-bloomer offending patterns. Additional patterns followed a more age-normative pattern of offending (bell-shaped curve) but varied in the timing and frequency of offending. Various individual ACEs and the cumulative number of ACEs distinguished between the pattern of non-offending and all other patterns of offending, but only homelessness and sexual abuse distinguished between patterns that involved offending. ACEs in the form of threats or deprivations, in line with the DMAP perspective, offered limited utility in distinguishing between patterns of self-reported offending. Findings suggest the need to target particular ACEs to stymie longer-term patterns of offending that may be particularly costly to individuals and society.

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Data Availability

Phase 1 of the Rochester Youth Development Study (RYDS) and the Rochester Intergenerational Study (RIGS) Years 1-20 are available from the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data. All RYDS and RIGS data are available by application from the PI and data manager.

Notes

  1. Data collection was approved by the University of Albany IRB (05-419); the current project was approved by Florida State University IRB (00004371). Parental consent/Primary caregiver was obtained (signature) before youths were contacted for participation and informed consent. Youths had to give verbal consent and sign as well.

  2. Exploratory factor analyses were conducted to determine whether two factors emerged in line with the constructs of “threats” and “deprivations” as proposed by McLaughlin et al. (2014). Only one factor emerged that contained all 11 ACEs. However, given the biological arguments regarding the varying consequences of ACEs, the two constructs were retained even though they represent a larger construct of “adversity”. The Pearson correlation coefficient between these two measures indicated a moderate relationship (r =.49).

  3. This pattern of results were replicated when using a threshold measure of cumulative ACEs. Experiencing 4 or more ACEs increased the relative risk of being classified into the adolescent-declining, emerging-adult desistor, moderate adult-declining, high adult-declining, late bloomer, and chronic offending pattern compared to a pattern of non-offending. This threshold measure did not distinguish between any other patterns of offending.

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Support for the Rochester Youth Development Study has been provided by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ-2020-MUMU-0075; 15PNIJ-23-AG-01491-MUMU), National Institute on Drug Abuse (R01DA020195, R01DA005512), the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (86-JN-CX-0007, 96-MU-FX-0014, 2004-MU-FX-0062), the National Science Foundation (SBR-9123299), and the National Institute of Mental Health (R01MH56486, R01MH63386). Technical assistance for this project was also provided by an NICHD grant (R24HD044943) to The Center for Social and Demographic Analysis at the University at Albany. Points of view or opinions in this document are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the funding agencies.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, United States

    Megan Bears Augustyn

  2. College of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Florida State University, Tallahassee, United States

    Megan Bears Augustyn & Emily Hargrove

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  1. Megan Bears Augustyn
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  2. Emily Hargrove
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Contributions

MBA came up with the research idea, performed all data cleaning and analyses, and wrote the Data, Methods, Results, and Discussion. EH conferred with MBA on measurement and model selection and wrote the Introduction and Literature Review. Both authors reviewed the final manuscript and contributed to revisions.

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Correspondence to Megan Bears Augustyn.

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Appendix

Appendix

Table 4 Offending Trajectory Model Selection
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Table 5 Offending Trajectory Model Diagnostics
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Table 6 Offending Measures
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Table 7 ACEs Measures (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 2009)
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Augustyn, M., Hargrove, E. “There Are Patterns To life…”: Adverse Childhood Experiences and Adolescent To Middle Adulthood Patterns of Self-Reported Offending. J Dev Life Course Criminology 12, 4 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40865-026-00294-z

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