Childhood psychosocial and environmental predictors of crime and victimization across life.
Nordic crime research is globally influential because it makes use of powerful register data. The main limitation of register data is its lack of important childhood psychosocial and environmental predictors of crime. The proposed project overcomes the register-only limitation through an analysis of the Stockholm Life-Course Project (SLCP), a longitudinal study of crime that includes childhood interview data. The SLCP shares features with seminal studies on the development of crime over life. The proposed project goes beyond those seminal studies by analyzing both crime and victimization across life.
This project includes four studies.
Study 1 determines how victimization and offending are related across life. The study also determines the extent to which the childhood environment can predict and distinguish between victims, offenders, and people who are both victims and offenders. A discordant sibling design is used.
Study 2 determines whether most crime and victimization events are experienced by a “vital few”, and whether childhood environmental and psychosocial factors can be used to predict the vital few.
Study 3 determines the impact of low self-control on offending and victimization across life. Multigenerational effects are tested.
Study 4 determines the effect of parental monitoring on offending and victimization across life. Participants are matched with siblings to analyze familial concordance of offending and victimization.
Final report
• The project’s purpose and development.
This project analysed criminal behaviour and victimization across life with the aims of determining patterns of victimization and offending across life and identifying predictors of victimization and offending. It took a novel approach of combining Swedish register data with data from childhood that was unavailable in conventional Swedish registers. These data came from interviews with children, their parents, their teachers, and assessments by professionals. The original data proposed for the project was drawn from the Stockholm Life Course Project (SLCP), a longitudinal study of the development of crime across life. As the project evolved, data from the Stockholm Birth Cohort have been included.
• Brief summary of implementation.
This project ran between January 2019 and December 2023. The project initially was planned for January 2019 and December 2021. However, parental leave and changing employment led to the funds not being used within the initial timeline and the project being extended. As a result, the project evolved over time, expanding to include more outcomes and new data, and in response to new research in the field. Unfortunately, the outcome of victimization was too rare to study in greater depth than what was done in Beckley et al. (2022). The Covid-19 pandemic also posed significant challenges with workflow, conference participation, and international travel. Presently, despite the project officially having ended, the lengthy process of publication in peer-reviewed academic journals means that manuscripts are still being revised and reviewed.
• The project’s three most important results and conclusions.
The three most important results were as follows:
1) Determining that early childhood problem behaviour was associated with a life-long risk of criminal offending and likely a greater risk of victimization. Moreover, this result appeared to be independent of participation in juvenile correctional settings.
2) Finding that a boy’s self-regulation during childhood was associated with whether he would ever commit a crime, have a psychiatric diagnosis, or die early. Additionally, ratings of self-regulation that were done by the boy’s teacher proved to be better predictors of future outcomes than ratings done by parents.
3) Determining that childhood adversity was associated with a greater risk of offending during adulthood. However, this association was likely due to the impact of childhood adversity on childhood problem behaviour. That is, it appeared that childhood adversity affected childhood problem behaviour, which in turn affected criminality during adulthood.
• New research questions generated.
Three new research questions have evolved from this study. First, how do protective factors work in combination with childhood adversity? Over the course of this study, it was apparent that individuals who experienced childhood adversity varied greatly in their criminal behaviour and in other life domains. This finding was simultaneously recognized by the scientific community. As a result, there has been an increased interest in the role of protective factors and how they may mediate or moderate the association between adversity and negative life outcomes such as crime and victimization. This research question has been submitted as an application for new research funding involving both Swedish and Dutch data. Second, what maternal factors impact life outcomes? This research question was generated following being invited to Florence, Italy to give a talk on perinatal risks for offending across life. Perinatal risks typically are often associated with childhood adversities such as parental substance use and parental mental health problems. Interestingly, my preliminary research on this demonstrated that perinatal risks, which have been theorized to be a key factor in who persists in crime, could not distinguish between adolescents who persisted in crime during adulthood and those that stopped offending by adulthood. This research question has been submitted as an application for new research funding using Swedish data. Third, what is the association between childhood adversity and early childhood problem behaviour? This question was generated from the study of adverse childhood experiences and crime across life. We were able to understand that adverse childhood experiences were associated with greater involvement in crime from adulthood onward. We also determined that the pattern of criminal offending across life begins before adulthood and appears to be impacted by childhood adversity. Yet, we could not determine whether exposure to adversity during early childhood vs adolescence, or both, was important for trajectories of criminal behaviour. It is anticipated that research to understand the effects of adversity during different developmental periods will be pursued using the Stockholm Birth Cohort data.
• Dissemination of project results and collaboration.
As a result of this research, I was invited to partake in numerous collaborative projects. This includes being invited as a co-author on various manuscripts (see publication list) and being invited to participate in various meetings such as the Lorenz Center Meeting on Violence and the Perinatal Risk Register-based Research meeting at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy.
The research results themselves have been spread through conference presentations (see publication list), seminars in various academic departments in Sweden and Finland, and in academic journal articles.
This project analysed criminal behaviour and victimization across life with the aims of determining patterns of victimization and offending across life and identifying predictors of victimization and offending. It took a novel approach of combining Swedish register data with data from childhood that was unavailable in conventional Swedish registers. These data came from interviews with children, their parents, their teachers, and assessments by professionals. The original data proposed for the project was drawn from the Stockholm Life Course Project (SLCP), a longitudinal study of the development of crime across life. As the project evolved, data from the Stockholm Birth Cohort have been included.
• Brief summary of implementation.
This project ran between January 2019 and December 2023. The project initially was planned for January 2019 and December 2021. However, parental leave and changing employment led to the funds not being used within the initial timeline and the project being extended. As a result, the project evolved over time, expanding to include more outcomes and new data, and in response to new research in the field. Unfortunately, the outcome of victimization was too rare to study in greater depth than what was done in Beckley et al. (2022). The Covid-19 pandemic also posed significant challenges with workflow, conference participation, and international travel. Presently, despite the project officially having ended, the lengthy process of publication in peer-reviewed academic journals means that manuscripts are still being revised and reviewed.
• The project’s three most important results and conclusions.
The three most important results were as follows:
1) Determining that early childhood problem behaviour was associated with a life-long risk of criminal offending and likely a greater risk of victimization. Moreover, this result appeared to be independent of participation in juvenile correctional settings.
2) Finding that a boy’s self-regulation during childhood was associated with whether he would ever commit a crime, have a psychiatric diagnosis, or die early. Additionally, ratings of self-regulation that were done by the boy’s teacher proved to be better predictors of future outcomes than ratings done by parents.
3) Determining that childhood adversity was associated with a greater risk of offending during adulthood. However, this association was likely due to the impact of childhood adversity on childhood problem behaviour. That is, it appeared that childhood adversity affected childhood problem behaviour, which in turn affected criminality during adulthood.
• New research questions generated.
Three new research questions have evolved from this study. First, how do protective factors work in combination with childhood adversity? Over the course of this study, it was apparent that individuals who experienced childhood adversity varied greatly in their criminal behaviour and in other life domains. This finding was simultaneously recognized by the scientific community. As a result, there has been an increased interest in the role of protective factors and how they may mediate or moderate the association between adversity and negative life outcomes such as crime and victimization. This research question has been submitted as an application for new research funding involving both Swedish and Dutch data. Second, what maternal factors impact life outcomes? This research question was generated following being invited to Florence, Italy to give a talk on perinatal risks for offending across life. Perinatal risks typically are often associated with childhood adversities such as parental substance use and parental mental health problems. Interestingly, my preliminary research on this demonstrated that perinatal risks, which have been theorized to be a key factor in who persists in crime, could not distinguish between adolescents who persisted in crime during adulthood and those that stopped offending by adulthood. This research question has been submitted as an application for new research funding using Swedish data. Third, what is the association between childhood adversity and early childhood problem behaviour? This question was generated from the study of adverse childhood experiences and crime across life. We were able to understand that adverse childhood experiences were associated with greater involvement in crime from adulthood onward. We also determined that the pattern of criminal offending across life begins before adulthood and appears to be impacted by childhood adversity. Yet, we could not determine whether exposure to adversity during early childhood vs adolescence, or both, was important for trajectories of criminal behaviour. It is anticipated that research to understand the effects of adversity during different developmental periods will be pursued using the Stockholm Birth Cohort data.
• Dissemination of project results and collaboration.
As a result of this research, I was invited to partake in numerous collaborative projects. This includes being invited as a co-author on various manuscripts (see publication list) and being invited to participate in various meetings such as the Lorenz Center Meeting on Violence and the Perinatal Risk Register-based Research meeting at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy.
The research results themselves have been spread through conference presentations (see publication list), seminars in various academic departments in Sweden and Finland, and in academic journal articles.