No abstract

Background: Previous research has shown that poor family relations in childhood are associated with adverse mental health in adulthood. Yet, few studies have followed the offspring until late adulthood, and very few have had access to register-based data on hospitalisation due to psychiatric illness. The aim of this study was to examine the association between poor family relations in adolescence and the likelihood of in-patient psychiatric care across the life course up until age 55. Methods: Data were derived from the Stockholm Birth Cohort study, with information on 2638 individuals born in 1953. Information on family relations was based on interviews with the participants’ mothers in 1968. Information on in-patient psychiatric treatment was derived from administrative registers from 1969 to 2008. Binary logistic regression was used. Results: Poor family relations in adolescence were associated with an increased risk of later in-patient treatment for a psychiatric diagnosis, even when adjusting for other adverse conditions in childhood. Further analyses showed that poor family relations in adolescence were a statistically significant predictor of in-patient psychiatric care up until age 36–45, but that the strength of the association attenuated over time. Conclusions: Poor family relationships during upbringing can have serious negative mental-health consequences that persist into mid-adulthood. However, the effect of poor family relations seems to abate with age. The findings point to the importance of effective interventions in families experiencing poor relationships.

Objectives The current study analyzed the association between a final paternal conviction that occurred sometime 10 years prior to birth through age 14 and subsequent child conviction risk to age 25. Methods We used Swedish register-based data on a two-generation dataset originating from a parental generation born in 1953. We employed a combination of population-averaged models that controlled for measured confounding together with an analysis of full siblings that ruled out unmeasured confounding shared between full siblings. Results The results showed that boys, but not girls, who were exposed to a paternal conviction during upbringing had an increased risk of being convicted themselves, net of measured and unmeasured familial confounds. There was, however, little indication for an age-effect at the time of a final paternal conviction, and there were no significant differences in violent crime between exposure-discordant siblings. Conclusions The results provide evidence for an effect of the exposure to a paternal conviction on child subsequent conviction risk that cannot merely be explained by familial factors shared between full siblings. These results are, however, conditional on gender and on the type of criminal outcome.

We study the criminal histories of 14,608 males and females in a full Stockholm birth cohort born in 1953 to age 64. Using an update of The Stockholm Birth Cohort Study data, we explore the amount of crimes recorded in the cohort before and after the advent of adulthood. We break down the age/crime curve into separate parameters, including onset, duration, and termination. Throughout, we utilize the large number of females (49%; n = 7 161) in the cohort, and compare long-term patterns of male and female criminal careers. Next, we focus on adulthood, and explore the existence and parameters of the adult-onset offender and its contribution to the overall volume of crime in the cohort. While crime peaks in adolescence, the main bulk of crimes in the cohort occurred after the dawning of adulthood. Nearly half of all male, and more than two-thirds of all female, crimes in the cohort occurred after age 25. In the case of violence, the majority of offences — around two-thirds for both genders — took place in adulthood. Around 23% of all males and 38% of all females with a criminal record in the cohort were first recorded for a criminal offence in adulthood. While a majority were convicted only once, a proportion of adult-onset offenders had a considerable risk of recidivism and repeated recidivism. These results suggest that quite a substantial proportion of the population initiate crime in adulthood, and that these offenders account for a nonnegligible proportion of adult crime.

Against the backdrop of an overall declining crime trend our overarching objective is to explore whether this development has concealed any degree of divergence between participation and frequency in crime. We employ Swedish longitudinal data comprising 25 complete birth cohorts born between 1960 and 1984 and followed to age 30 using convictions data. The results show a complex pattern of change, by which the crime rate partly conceals divergent processes between participation and frequency. In particular, among the males we find a consistent decrease in the size of the convicted population, whereas the frequency of crimes among convicted offenders has increased across cohorts born during the early 1970s and later. We discuss the results against both behavioral and reactional mechanisms and conclude that future crime trends research should consider a broad range of criminal career parameters which cannot be discerned using aggregate crime data.