Maternal Alcohol Use Disorder and Risk of Child Contact with the Justice System in Western Australia: A Population Cohort Record Linkage Study

Abstract

BackgroundEarly contact with the justice system is associated with a multitude of negative outcomes across the life course. This includes an increased risk of ongoing justice contact, social disadvantage and marginalization, and mental health and substance use issues. Children whose mothers have an alcohol use disorder may be at risk of early justice system contact, and we sought to quantify this relationship in a Western Australian cohort.MethodsThis population cohort study made use of linked administrative data. Those in‐scope for the study were women who had a birth recorded on the Midwives Notification System (1983 to 2007). The exposed cohort were mothers who had an alcohol‐related diagnosis (ICD9/10), recorded on administrative data. This included mental and behavioral disorders which were alcohol related, diseases which could be entirely attributed to alcohol and other ICD alcohol codes. These women were considered to have an alcohol use disorder, which was a proxy for heavy drinking. The comparison cohort was frequency‐matched sample with no alcohol‐related diagnosis identified on administrative data sets.ResultsAfter adjusting for potential confounders, children whose mothers had a maternal alcohol use disorder had a significantly increased odds of justice contact when compared to those whose mothers had no diagnosis (odds ratio [OR] = 1.79, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.60 to 1.99). Additional significant maternal factors associated with child justice contact included being Indigenous (OR = 5.14, 95% CI = 4.54 to 5.81), low maternal age, low socioeconomic status, being unmarried, and a history of a mental health problems. Significant child‐level factors, which were associated with increased odds of justice contact, included being male, a mental health diagnosis, child protection contact, parity, and academic failure.ConclusionsChildren who were exposed to a maternal alcohol use disorder had significantly increased odds of contact with the justice system. Additional risk was associated with being Indigenous and with markers of social disadvantage. These results suggest that prevention and early intervention services should span across agencies in an effort to reduce risk.

Putting ‘Justice’ in Recovery Capital: Yarning about Hopes and Futures with Young People in Detention

“…It is a dynamic and interactive strength-based model that attempts to measure the range of internal and external resources that can be used to initiate and sustain recovery (Cloud and Granfield 2009). Recovery capital has also been applied in the broader context of recovery from mental health issues and trauma, which are adversities that often encompass the lives of justice-involved youth (Hafekost et al 2017;Indig, Frewen and Moore 2016).…”

“…Youth with neurodevelopmental disabilities can have a range of impairments that result in impulsivity, poor attention, impaired memory and poor communication, and these youth are likely to be disadvantaged at all junctions of the criminal justice process. Their lack of (or different) understandings of social norms and inability to learn from experience exacerbate their involvement in crime (Blagg, Tulich and Bush 2015;Streissguth and O'Malley 2000), as do mental health problems, AOD problems and trauma (Hafekost et al 2017;Indig, Frewen and Moore 2016).…”

“…It must be acknowledged that, generally, justice-involved youth are traumatised populations with high levels of mental health problems, conduct disorders, self-harm, and alcohol and other drug (AOD) use (Indig, Frewen and Moore 2016). The nexus between criminality, mental health problems, AOD problems and crime trajectories is well established internationally (Bennett and Holloway 2009;Caudy, Tillyer and Tillyer 2018;Hafekost et al 2017;Indig, Frewen and Moore 2016). This is compounded among Indigenous youth, who have higher levels of neurocognitive disability (Baldry et al 2015;Dias et al 2013), intellectual disability (Indig et al 2011) and fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) (Blagg, Tulich and Bush 2015;Bower et al 2018) compared with their non-Indigenous peers.…”

Maternal Alcohol-Use Disorder and Child Outcomes

“…[1][2][3][9][10][11][12][13] A number of studies using the same population cohort of Western Australian mothers with an alcoholrelated diagnosis and their children considered in this present article have demonstrated an increased likelihood of a range of negative biological and social outcomes for children of mothers with an alcoholrelated diagnosis. [14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22] These previous studies revealed that the highest risk of intellectual disability, 20 prenatally or perinatally acquired cerebral palsy, 18 being small for gestational age, being born very preterm, 21 or alcohol-related birth defects 19 occurred in children whose mothers received an alcohol-related diagnosis during pregnancy, indicating that maternal alcohol-use disorder is a direct cause of these biological outcomes. In addition, there were significantly increased odds of stillbirth, 22 sudden infant death syndrome, and other infant mortality 23 for children of mothers with an alcohol-related diagnosis recorded prepregnancy and/or postpregnancy.…”

“…In contrast to the studies on biological outcomes, the timing of the diagnosis made little difference in the strength of association in the analyses of educational outcomes, including failing to meet minimum academic standards, 16 having poor attendance, 14 and having child contact with the justice system. 15 The authors suggested that social or environmental factors may drive this relationship. Increased odds of a substantiated child protection allegation or an out-of-home period have also been reported, with the risk highest being when the mother had an alcohol diagnosis recorded during pregnancy or within 1 year prepregnancy or postpregnancy.…”