The nuanced relationship between adverse childhood experiences and recidivism risk scores among women leaving jail: A preliminary exploration.

Risk reduction is an important task in the criminal justice system, for which systematic risk assessment is an integral part of decision making. Self-reported experience of psychological health apart, only fixed historical variables were related to estimated recidivism risk. There was no relationship between the mutable constructs of attitudes towards crime or employment status and estimated risk. This raises the question of whether the risk of recidivism is increased when there is a background of childhood trauma. Implications for using risk reduction tools to inform the need for trauma-informed correctional care are discussed. Longitudinal research assessing recidivism is needed to test this further.