Linking Childhood Exposure to Physical Abuse and Adult Offending: Examining Mediating Factors and Gendered Relationships

This article examines relationships between physical abuse and official and self‐reported offending among 480 male and female offenders serving community corrections orders in Queensland, Australia. It examines whether offending rates vary between abused and non‐abused respondents and whether the abuse–offending relationship is maintained in the presence of demographic and juvenile offending variables. The study explores whether family and school factors can mediate the abuse–offending relationship. The results reveal that physically abused offenders reported higher rates of violent, property, and total offending than non‐abused offenders. The effects of abuse on violent and property crime were reduced with the introduction of demographic and juvenile offending variables, but an overall effect of physical abuse remained for total offending. Maternal support was associated with lower levels of adult offending among physically abused respondents, while school expulsion and attachment to school for non‐conventional reasons (e.g., non‐academic) appeared to exacerbate the abuse–offending relationship.