Childhood maltreatment experiences and adult attachment style in male offenders

John Bowlby began to study childhood maltreatment, attachment and offending behavior many years before he conceived of attachment theory; through work with maladjusted children he came to believe that actual family experiences were key factors in the etiology of emotional disturbances. The present study examined the childhood maltreatment experiences and adult attachment representations, as defined by Bartholomew (1990) of 40 adult male offenders incarcerated at a medium security federal institution in the Fraser Valley. A control group, of 23 University of British Columbia male undergraduates, was also examined. Childhood maltreatment and other familial experiences were gathered using a modified version of the Family Attachment Interview (Bartholomew & Horowitz, 1991); adult attachment representations were assessed using the Peer Attachment Interview (Bartholomew & Horowitz, 1991), and coded using the four-category attachment framework developed by Bartholomew (1990). Participants also completed a questionnaire package that will not be analyzed for purposes of this thesis. It was found that the offender sample did experience significantly more childhood maltreatment on 5 of the 6 maltreatment variables than did the undergraduate sample; however no significant difference was found on the emotional neglect variable. In terms of attachment representations, results indicate that the inmate population is significantly more insecure in their attachment representations than are the university undergraduates; however, when compared to similar samples in the literature, both groups were significantly different in their attachment representations. Significant differences in childhood maltreatment, and attachment representation were not found. Discussion focuses on the limitations of the present samples, the need for future research on this issue with larger samples, and the usefulness of the attachment paradigm in understanding the impact of childhood maltreatment and family of origin variables on offenders; from both treatment and risk management perspectives.Arts, Faculty ofPsychology, Department ofGraduat