The Relationship between Childhood Trauma, Adult Trauma and the Severity of Adult Criminal Behavior Committed by Female Clients at Langata Women’s Maximum Prison

Abstract:

Children face various forms of traumatic experiences such as psychological, sexual, emotional or physical abuse (Payne, Gainey & Carey, 2007) which may be compounded by neglect (Hume, 2011; United Nations Children’s Fund, 2014). Abuse experienced in childhood is thought to set in motion psychological distress in adolescence or adulthood which may adversely affect the concerned individual in many ways such as the forging of intimate relationships in adulthood or engaging in criminal behavior (Nguyen, Karney & Bradbury, 2016). The focus of this paper was to investigate whether there was a link between severity of criminal behavior in adulthood and a history of adult or childhood trauma among female offenders. The study engaged 100 adult female offenders at the Lang’ata Women’s Maximum Prison, Nairobi. Rates of traumatic experience were higher in adults than in children. Significant positive correlations were found between general trauma and physical punishment r(100) = .44, p