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54 Crime & Delinquency 3 (2008)

handle is hein.journals/cadq54 and id is 1 raw text is: Jaur 008 -3 0 2008,h N~g P.bitions Predicting Adolescent and 10.11711 Adult Antisocial Behavior hosted at http://ontlinecsagepub.com Among Adjudicated Delinquent Females Stephen A. Cernkovich Bowling Green State University, OH Nadine Lanctbt Universitt de Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada Peggy C. Giordano Bowling Green State University, OH Studies identifying the mechanisms underlying the causes and consequences of antisocial behavior among female delinquents as they transit to adulthood are scarce and have important limitations: Most are based on official statistics, they typically are restricted to normative samples, and rarely do they gather prospec- tive data from samples of high-risk females. By contrast, this research is based on a longitudinal sample of females who were interviewed initially in 1982 (n = 127) when they were institutionalized adolescent offenders, and subse- quently as young adults in 1995 (n = 109). Our analyses, focusing on the impact of a variety of family factors derived from social control and strain theory, show that physical and sexual abuse during childhood and adolescence are potent predictors of adult criminality, though not of adolescent delinquency. The implications of the long-term negative impact of childhood and adolescent abuse are discussed, and concrete policy recommendations offered. Keywords: female crime and delinquency; life course; physical abuse; sexual abuse; family relationships A ntisocial behavior tends to be defined and measured differently by criminologists, developmental and social psychologists, and psychia- trists. Each discipline also tends to focus on specific populations and on different points in the life course (Moffitt, Caspi, Rutter, & Silva, 2001). 3