Criminal offending and the family environment: Swedish national high-risk home-reared and adopted-away co-sibling control study.

BACKGROUND: Criminal offending is strongly transmitted across generations. AIMS: To clarify the contribution of rearing environment to cross-generational transmission of crime. METHOD: Using Swedish national registries, we identified 1176 full-sibling and 3085 half-sibling sets from high-risk families where at least one sibling was adopted and the other raised by the biological parents. RESULTS: Risk for criminal conviction was substantially lower in the full- and half-siblings who were adopted v. home-reared (hazard ratios (HR) = 0.56, 95% CI 0.50-0.64 and 0.60, 95% CI 0.56-0.65, respectively). The protective effect of adoption was significantly stronger in sibships with two v. one high-risk parent. CONCLUSIONS: Using matched high-risk full- and half-siblings, we found replicated evidence that (a) rearing environment has a strong impact on risk for criminal conviction, (b) high-quality rearing environments have especially strong effects in those at high familial risk for criminal offending and (c) the protective effects of adoption are stronger for more severe crimes and for repeated offending.

The different faces of impulsivity as links between childhood maltreatment and young adult crime.

Crime is a major public health and safety threat. Many studies have suggested that early exposure to child maltreatment increases an individual's risk for persistent serious crime in adulthood. Despite these findings about the connection between child maltreatment and criminal behavior, there is a paucity of empirically-based knowledge about the processes or pathways that link child maltreatment to later involvement in crime. Using a community sample of 337 young adults (ages 18-25) in a U.S. metropolitan area, the present study examined the role of various facets of impulsivity in linking child maltreatment to crime. A series of factor analyses identified three types of crime including property crime, violent crime, and fraud. Structural equation modelings were conducted to examine the associations among childhood maltreatment, four facets of impulsivity, and criminal behavior, controlling for sociodemographic information, family income and psychological symptoms. The present study found that child emotional abuse was indirectly related to property crime and fraud through urgency while a lack of premeditation mediates the relationship between child neglect and property crime. Child physical abuse was directly related to all three types of crime. Personality traits of urgency and lack of premeditation may play a significant role in the maltreatment-crime link. Preventive interventions targeting impulsivity traits such as urgency and a lack of premeditation might have promising impacts in curbing criminal behavior among maltreatment victims.

A national Swedish longitudinal twin-sibling study of criminal convictions from adolescence through early adulthood.

BACKGROUND: Prior twin and adoption studies have demonstrated the importance of both genetic and shared environmental factors in the etiology of criminal behavior (CB). However, despite substantial interest in life-course theories of CB, few genetically informative studies have examined CB in a developmental context. METHOD: In 69,767 male-male twin pairs and full-sibling pairs with ≤ 2 years' difference in age, born 1958-1976 and ascertained from the Swedish Twin and Population Registries, we obtained information on all criminal convictions from 1973 to 2011 from the Swedish Crime Register. We fitted a Cholesky structural model, using the OpenMx package, to CB in these pairs over three age periods: 15-19, 20-24, and 25-29. RESULTS: The Cholesky model had two main genetic factors. The first began at ages 15-19 and declined in importance over development. The second started at ages 20-24 and was stable over time. Only one major shared environmental factor was seen, beginning at ages 15-19. Heritability for CB declined from ages 15-29, as did shared environmental effects, although at a slower rate. CONCLUSIONS: Genetic risk factors for CB in males are developmentally dynamic, demonstrating both innovation and attenuation. These results are consistent with theories of adolescent-limited and life-course persistent CB subtypes. Heritability for CB did not increase over time as might be predicted from active gene-environmental correlation. However, consistent with expectation, the proportion of variability explained by shared environmental effects declined slightly as individuals aged and moved away from their original homes and neighborhoods.

The relation between adolescent social competence and young adult delinquency and educational attainment among at-risk youth: the mediating role of peer delinquency.

OBJECTIVE: We examined trajectories of adolescent social competence as a resilience factor among at-risk youth. To examine potential mechanisms of this resilience process, we investigated the putative mediating effect of peer delinquency on the relation between adolescent social competence and young adult delinquency seriousness and educational attainment. METHOD: Participants (n = 257) were screened to be at risk for antisocial behaviour at age 13 years. Data were derived from an ongoing longitudinal study of the development of antisocial and delinquent behaviour among inner-city boys, the Pittsburgh Youth Study. We used data collected from participants when aged 13 years until they were aged 25.5 years for our study. RESULTS: Results indicated that boys with high levels of social competence decreased their involvement with deviant peers throughout adolescence, which, in turn, predicted less serious forms of delinquency in early adulthood. Social competence had a direct effect on educational attainment in early adulthood, as boys who developed social competencies in adolescence went further in school irrespective of their involvement with delinquent peers. CONCLUSIONS: Results suggest that promoting the development of social competencies and reducing involvement with delinquent peers will protect at-risk youth from engaging in serious delinquency in early adulthood while increasing their educational success.