The current study investigates the association between physical child maltreatment and juvenile delinquent behavior in the context of the Situational Action Theory (SAT) (Wikström, 2006, 2017, 2020). Self-control, morality and exposure to criminogenic settings are proposed as possible mechanisms explaining the association between physical child maltreatment and adolescent offending. The hypotheses are tested in a subsample of the third wave of the International Self-Report Delinquency Study (ISRD3), a large international non-clinical study on delinquency and victimization among adolescents. The final sample consists of N = 24,956 adolescents aged 12–16 years from nine West European countries. While controlling for dependence due to nested data and several covariates, the models are tested for overall offending and separately for violent and property offending. Results confirm that physical child maltreatment is associated with the main concepts of SAT (lower self-control; lower morality; and more exposure to criminogenic environments), which in turn are associated with juvenile delinquency. The models show partial mediation for overall offending, property offending and violent offending. The findings provide support for the theoretical prowess of SAT and its main concepts: self-control, morality and exposure to criminogenic settings as mediators in the well-established physical child maltreatment/delinquency link. These findings are consistent with the ‘cycle of violence’ perspective and contribute to the theoretical clarification of the mechanisms involved in the child maltreatment/delinquency link. The findings fail to confirm a ‘crime-specific propensity’. The article concludes with a discussion of implications for prevention.

当前的研究在情境行为理论（SAT）的背景下调查了虐待儿童的身体行为与少年犯罪行为之间的关系（Wikström，2006，2017，2020）。提出了自我控制，道德和暴露于犯罪环境的可能机制，以解释对儿童的身体虐待和青少年犯罪之间的联系。在第三波国际自我报告犯罪研究（ISRD3）的子样本中检验了这些假设，该研究是有关青少年犯罪和受害的大型国际非临床研究。最终样本包含N=来自九个西欧国家的24956名12至16岁的青少年。在控制由于嵌套数据和多个协变量引起的依赖性的同时，对模型进行了整体违规测试，并对暴力和财产违规行为分别进行了测试。结果证实，对儿童的身体虐待与SAT的主要概念（较低的自我控制，较低的道德以及更多的犯罪环境）有关，而后者又与青少年犯罪有关。模型显示了对整体犯罪，财产犯罪和暴力犯罪的部分调解。研究结果为SAT及其主要概念的理论能力提供了支持：自我控制，道德和在犯罪根源下的暴露，是公认的身体虐待儿童/过失犯罪环节的调解人。这些发现与“暴力循环”观点相一致，并有助于对儿童虐待/过失链接中涉及的机制进行理论上的澄清。该发现未能证实“特定犯罪倾向”。本文最后讨论了对预防的影响。