Award Title: The impact of childhood adversity on violent crime in adolescence and early adulthood
Funder: Economic and Social Research Council

Abstract: The aim of this project is to provide a better understanding of the link between childhood adversity and serious violence (defined as violence against the person, possession of an offensive weapon, and homicide) during adolescence and early adulthood. We will consider a wide range of adversities, including those encompassed within the adverse childhood experiences framework (abuse, neglect, domestic violence, parental separation, substance abuse, mental illness and imprisonment) as well as exposure to other traumatic events such as bereavement and bullying. 

It is known that childhood adversity is associated with an increased risk of being involved in violence and it has rapidly become a central pillar of violence prevention policy and activity. However, our understanding of the causal pathway from adversity to violence is limited. Previous studies have often relied on retrospective reports of childhood adversity and have aggregated these diverse experiences into a sum score. As such, it is not clear whether the associations are causal, which adversities have the largest impact, and the extent to which the timing of exposure to adversity is important. Further, it is unclear what role other factors such as mental health, school attainment and absence, and risk behaviours such as drug use play in this association.

The specific objectives of our project are:
1.	To establish linkage between the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC, comprising longitudinal study data and linked health and education data) and police data on criminal convictions and cautions as a resource for this project and future research.
2.	To explore the extent to which self-reported crime and antisocial behaviours and police-recorded crime in ALSPAC are subject to misclassification and missing information in order to derive more accurate measures of the prevalence of serious violence.
3.	To understand the relative and temporal contribution of adversity experiences in the emergence of serious violent behaviour during adolescence and early adulthood.
4.	To understand the mediating role of school outcomes (attainment, attendance, exclusion), other risk-taking behaviours (smoking, alcohol and illicit drug use), and mental health outcomes (depression, anxiety, ADHD) in the link between adversity and serious violence during adolescence/early adulthood.

As part of objective 3 we will investigate the importance of the timing of the adversities in terms of their impact on the risk of perpetrating serious violence. Specifically, we will look at whether the risk depends on when the adversities were first experienced and whether they were experienced throughout childhood or for a limited time only. Our findings will facilitate the design and targeting of appropriate interventions aimed at reducing the risk of serious violence among vulnerable individuals. This is currently a UK Government priority.

ALSPAC, together with linked data on crime, education, and health, provides a unique resource for filling knowledge gaps in this area. Firstly, it has detailed information on a wide range of individual and family factors that are potential confounders of the relationship between adversity and violence. Secondly, data on adversities were collected at repeated time points during childhood, allowing us to examine the impact of timing. Thirdly, linking to police records will provide crime data as recorded by the police to complement self-reported crime; it will also give data on individuals who are no longer actively contributing to ALSPAC (in addition to those who are). This is vital because research has shown that individuals who have been lost to follow up are more likely to have experienced adversity during childhood and more likely to be involved in crime. Our methodological work will provide a blueprint for estimating the prevalence of serious violence and other crimes using multiple sources of data.

Lay Abstract: Even though rates of overall crime have gone down in the UK over the last two decades, levels of serious violence in the past four years indicate a reversal of this trend. As a result, tackling serious violence has become a UK Government priority. One of the main ways to prevent youth involvement in violence is to identify and limit its early causes.

It is well-known that individuals who have had traumatic or stressful experiences during childhood (referred to as adverse childhood experiences or childhood adversity) - such as being a victim of child abuse or having a parent who suffers from a mental illness - are more likely to engage in violence during adolescence and early adulthood. However, it is not clear which adverse experiences contribute most to violence nor whether they have a greater or lesser impact if experienced at different ages. The aim of our project is to answer these questions.

We will address several research questions about the relationship between childhood adversity and serious violence during adolescence and early adulthood. We will consider a wide range of adversities including (but not restricted to) abuse (emotional, physical, and sexual), bullying, bereavement, and parental substance abuse, mental illness, and criminality. The choice of adversities to include in our analyses will be informed in part by the Ambassadors for Vulnerable Children and Young People on our steering group (these are young people who have experience of adversity in childhood, and who are employed by local authorities as ambassadors). We will identify whether any of these adversities have a particularly large impact on the risk of being involved in violent crime as a teenager or a young adult. Another goal is to determine whether there are critical periods during childhood where exposure to adversity - either in general or to one or more specific adversities - puts a child at particularly high risk. We also plan to investigate what role school attainment and attendance, mental health, and risk-taking behaviours (such as taking drugs) play in the relationship between childhood adversity and violence.

To fulfil the goals of our project, we will use data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), a world-leading data resource that has recorded extremely detailed information on the health, development and family circumstances of approximately 14,500 families living in the Bristol area since the early 1990s. Data collection started during pregnancy and has continued year on year ever since. The richness of this data resource makes it possible to answer questions that previous studies have been unable to address. We will link ALSPAC to data provided by Avon and Somerset police to generate the richest data set on violence and childhood adversity ever created in the UK, further enhancing this unique resource and enabling other researchers to investigate the causes and consequences of offending in new ways.

Our findings will shed light on how and when we can best intervene with children (or families) at risk of violence. Addressing these key questions has the potential to help reduce rates of violent crime and to provide a better understanding of how childhood experience contributes to violence that will benefit perpetrators and their families, victims, practitioners, policy makers and the general public.

Research Activity Codes: 2.3 PSYCHOLOGICAL, SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC FACTORS
Health Categories: MENTAL HEALTH