Anders Nilsson, criminology, Stockholm University

Long term consequences of juvenile delinquency and crime. A life course study

2008-2012

There is a lack of research that is able to describe the longer term consequences of involvement in crime for broader welfare outcomes in adult life. And it exists even less analyses of how involvement in crime interacts with conditions connected both to individual-level resources and socio-historical constraints, in producing negative life outcomes in the longer term. For the majority of offenders, involvement in crime is a transient phenomenon. But does the fact that the majority eventually desist from crime mean that they become established in mid-life, with jobs and families, or does involvement in crime have a negative influence on the individual's life course and career opportunities even over the longer term? To answer these questions we have used a new longitudinal data set, The Stockholm Birth Cohort Study, which provides rich life-course data from birth (1953) to age 48 (2001) for 14,294 girls and boys. The fact that we study both sexes, thus expanding the research field to describe not only the reality of men, but also that of women, is clearly one of the strengths of this project.

RESULTS

The most important results have been presented in three articles. In the first of these ("Established or excluded? A longitudinal study of criminality, work and family formation") we look at different groups in the Stockholm birth cohort defined on the basis of their level of involvement in registered crime. The outcome measures focus on labour market attachment and family formation during different stages of life. Our results show that those who have been registered for crime had a significantly worse welfare situation, and this is particularly true for females. In middle age, the majority of these women can be described as being in a state of social exclusion. Criminal involvement in young adulthood leads to a substantial additional risk of social exclusion (measured by indicators on weak labour market attachment and welfare benefit), even given controls for other factors that distinguish between the groups. The individuals who committed offences after their teenage years encounter more difficulties both attaining and maintaining an attachment to the labour market; they are quite literally both the "last in" and the "first out". However, the differences between the youths who desisted from crime in their teenage years and those with no registered offending are quite small.

In the second article ("Does it cost more to be a female offender?") we focus on the comparison between males and females. While it is well established that many more males than females commit various types of crime, there is much less information available on the extent to which the life courses of males and females who have been involved in crime are similar or distinctive. In this study we compare different groups of males and females defined on the basis of their registered crime at different ages. What differences can we see in their social background, criminality, drug abuse and living conditions in late mid-life? By comparing the lives of delinquent boys and girls we increase our understanding of gender-specific and gender-neutral processes underlying criminal involvement and its long term consequences. Does it take more, in terms of childhood risk factors, and cost more, in terms of long-term negative consequences, to be a female offender? Our outcome measures in late mid-life focus on labour market attachment, income and family situation. When analysing the long term impact of criminal involvement at different ages we take into consideration differences in social background and direct a special focus at drug abuse. The results show that the female cohort members have experienced more disadvantaged childhoods than the males registered for offending. The results also indicate that involvement in crime seems to cost more for females, in terms of social exclusion in mid-life. To our knowledge, this is the first study that is able to analyse the significance of involvement in crime, childhood circumstances and drug abuse for living conditions up to late mid-life, while at the same time including comparisons of males and females.

The third article that we want to highlight ("Involvement in crime, individual resources and structural constraints") adds to the previous ones by also taking structural constraints into consideration. The question we pose is how individual resources, criminal involvement and a major economic crisis interact in the process of increasing differences in labour market success in groups defined on the basis of their level of involvement in crime. By analysing how an economic downturn affect labour market attachment in a Swedish birth cohort, and to what extent the revealed patterns depend on acquired resources and criminal involvement respectively, we are able to partly explain how processes of cumulative disadvantage evolve. Our results show that differences in incomes and labour market attachment among categories of offenders and non-offenders tend to grow rather than diminish over time, both among men and women. We find the "fanning out" pattern in "life success" that cumulative disadvantage theories predict. This polarization is strengthened, but not fully explained, by the unemployment crisis that Sweden experienced during the 1990s. With controls for "vulnerability", i.e. differences in individual resources, the differences between the groups diminish and the effect of the crisis is much less apparent. Those with a criminal record are more sensitive to risk exposure in adulthood, which is partly explained by initial differences in family resources and resource attainment during the life-course. The latter is especially true for men. For female offender our controls manage to explain the gap to a lesser extent. There seems to be gender specific causes to the widening gap among women. One possible explanation might be that criminal involvement per se tends to have more negative consequences for female offenders. To conclude, both individual resources and structural constraint contribute in explaining differences in life success between different groups defined on the basis of their criminal involvement. Our findings highlight that historical events at a structural level also are important when we describe individual biographies and events in the life course. We think this is an important finding that adds to how criminology should understand life-courses and processes of desistance.

Results from the project have been presented at seminars and conferences in Sweden and abroad: The Annual meeting of the American society of criminology 2010, the European society of criminology 2011, the Stockholm Symposium 2011. Results have also been reported in media.

NEW RESEARCH QUESTIONS INSPIRED BY THE PROJECT

Our results show that criminal involvement in adulthood leads to a substantial additional risk of social exclusion in mid-life, even given controls for childhood conditions and drug abuse. To further identify the processes by which criminal involvement is linked to outcomes in mid-life a more refined analysis is needed. In what ways do crime and society's reactions to crime, and in particular imprisonment, serve to intensify an unfavourable career, characterised by weak bonds to conventional society? It is clear from our findings that there is a substantial level of within-group variance in relation to the situation experienced by cohort members as adults, including those who were registered for crime as adults. How can this variation be explained? In coming studies we will focus on the within-group variation found among those registered for involvement in crime: what differentiates the males and females for whom things turned out well from those for whom things went badly? We have also shown that drug abuse is a significant factor for the living conditions experienced by the group of persistent offenders at age 48. There are therefore reasons to study the significance of drug abuse for subsequent welfare outcomes in more detail.

Publications

Nilsson, A och Estrada, F (2009) Hur gick det för dem? Brottsliga pojkar och flickor som vuxna. Ingår i: Hobson, K (red) "Efter løsladelse": Rapport fra NSfK:s 51. forskarseminar, Scandinavian research council for criminology.

Nilsson, A och Estrada, F (2009). Kriminalitet och livschanser. Uppväxtvillkor, brottslighet och levnadsförhållanden som vuxen. Arbetsrapport, Institutet för Framtidsstudier; 2009:20.

Nilsson, A och Estrada, F (2009). Criminality and life-chances. A longitudinal study of crime, childhood circumstances and living conditions. Department of Criminology Report series 2009:3.

Estrada, F och Nilsson, A (2010). Fattigdom och brott - från förklaring till bortförklaring. Framtider, 1:26-28.

Nilsson, A och Estrada, F (2011). Established or excluded? A longitudinal study of criminality, work and family formation. The European journal of criminology, 8(3) 229-245.

Nilsson, A, Bäckman, O & Estrada, F (2011). Criminality and life-chances – The importance of individual resources and structural constraint. I Rapport fra NSfK:s 53. forskerseminar, Scandinavian research council for criminology.

Alm, S och Nilsson, A (2011). Cause for concern or moral panic? The prospects of the Swedish mods in retrospect. Journal of Youth Studies, 14(7) 777-793.

Estrada, F och Nilsson, A (2011). Fattigdom, segregation och brott. I: Alm, S, Bäckman, O, Gavanas, A och Nilsson, A (red) Utanförskap. Stockholm: Dialogos.

Bäckman, O och Nilsson, A (2011). Social exkludering i ett livsförloppsperspektiv. I: Alm, S, Bäckman, O, Gavanas, A och Nilsson, A (red) Utanförskap. Stockholm: Dialogos.

Estrada, F och Nilsson, A (2012). Does it cost more to be a female offender? Feminist Criminology (Advance access Jan 2012).

Nilsson, A, Bäckman, O & Estrada, F (2012). Involvement in crime, individual resources and structural constraints. Processes of cumulative (dis)advantage in a Stockholm birth cohort (Submitted).