Title: Neurogenetics and differential susceptibility to criminogenic social environments: How do young people develop and express crime propensities?
Funder: Economic and Social Research Council

Abstract: Human action is all about interaction between people and their environments. One kind of action of seminal interest to policy-makers is criminal behaviour. In recent years, an exciting new direction in the study of crime has been the role of genetics, and particularly gene-environment interactions, in crime causation. However, most genetic studies lack compelling measures of social environments and, especially, people's exposure to social environments, and rarely assess the role of change and stability in exposure over time. No study as far as we are aware has linked both genetic and neurocognitive data to detailed longitudinal data on people's exposure to social environments. The proposed research addresses this shortcoming by designing an original genetic study, using the latest methods for DNA analysis, with links to the Peterborough Adolescent and Young Adult Development Study (PADS+), an ongoing longitudinal study which has used innovative methods to study personal characteristics and exposure to social environments and already collected more than 10 years of detailed data spanning the period from pre-adolescence into young adulthood from a contemporary UK age cohort. One main objective of this research is to bring together the most advanced methods from human genetic and social environmental research to study gene-environment interactions in the development of people's crime propensities and their involvement in acts of crime, bridging the gap between two very divergent perspectives on the causes of crime. In doing so, the study aspires to advance knowledge about which genetic and environmental factors are especially important for people's crime involvement, why they are important and, consequently, what policies and practices may be most efficacious in preventing people from developing crime propensities and committing acts of crime. The first of these methods is the sequencing of genetic data to identify whether certain individuals carry genes of interest to criminologists, such as those associated with social, moral and emotional cognition, violent and impulsive behaviour, mental illness, and substance use and addiction. DNA sequencing technology is advancing rapidly and allowing for increasingly ambitious and affordable genotypic research, and the proposed study aims to capitalize on cutting-edge methods. The second method is the innovative combination of a small-area community survey and census data with a detailed space-time diary which PADS+ has used to collect data not only on participants' family and neighbourhood environments but all the places where they spend their time, including detailed data about what happens in those settings. Using this data, the study has already published ground-breaking research showing how key personal characteristics interact with exposure to different environments in determining people's crime involvement (e.g., Wikström et al. 2012). Using these two methods, the proposed study will be able explore the relationship between participants' genes and their development of specific neurocognitive abilities and crime propensities, against the backdrop of their exposure to different social environments and in relation to their self-reported and official crime involvement, as well as other relevant outcomes. Key areas of impact include the advancement of knowledge about what features of social environments are particularly important for people's crime involvement, who may be vulnerable to those environments, and why. This can improve our understanding of how to best identify and support those who may be especially vulnerable.


Research activity codes: 2.3 PSYCHOLOGICAL, SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC FACTORS;2.1 BIOLOGICAL AND ENDOGENOUS FACTORS
Health categories: MENTAL HEALTH