To Örebro University

Purpose: Risk and protective factors for antisocial behavior have been shown to act in a cumulative manner. The purpose of this article is to examine the predictive power of risk factors and protective indices predicting violent offending.

Methods: We used longitudinal data across 25 years to predict violent offenses for 475 males. Cumulative childhood risk factors (age 10), and-cumulative individual, family, peer and school protective factors (ages 13, 15) were analyzed.

Results: The likelihood for a conviction for violent offenses showed a fivefold increase with an increase in risk factors from 0 to 3. This increase was markedly reduced when controlling for protective factors. Similarly, controlling for risk factors, the likelihood for a conviction was almost ameliorated, showing a tenfold decrease, with an increase in protective factors from 0 to 10. Interactions between cumulative risk and protective factors were also found. Total number of protective factors significantly decreased the likelihood of violent offenses for those with and without childhood behavioral risk factors, however the decrease was significantly greater for those with no childhood risk factors.

Conclusions: Analyses of antisocial behavior should not be restricted to risk factors, but include protective factors, if the purpose is to better tailor interventions. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Purpose: To describe official adult-onset offenders, investigate their antisocial histories and test hypotheses about their origins.

Methods: We defined adult-onset offenders among 931 Dunedin Study members followed to age 38, using criminal-court conviction records.

Results: Official adult-onset offenders were 14% of men, and 32% of convicted men, but accounted for only 15% of convictions. As anticipated by developmental theories emphasizing early-life influences on crime, adult-onset offenders' histories of antisocial behavior spanned back to childhood. Relative to juvenile-offenders, during adolescence they had fewer delinquent peers and were more socially inhibited, which may have protected them from conviction. As anticipated by theories emphasizing the importance of situational influences on offending, adult onset offenders, relative to non-offenders, during adulthood more often had schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and alcohol-dependence, had weaker social bonds, anticipated fewer informal sanctions, and self-reported more offenses. Contrary to some expectations, adult-onset offenders did not have high IQ or high socioeconomic-status families protecting them from juvenile conviction.

Conclusions: A tailored theory for adult-onset offenders is unwarranted because few people begin crime de novo as adults. Official adult-onset offenders fall on a continuum of crime and its correlates, between official non offenders and official juvenile-onset offenders. Existing theories can accommodate adult-onset offenders.

Purpose: Resting heart rate (RHR) is a well-established biological risk factor for criminal behavior. However, potential moderating effects of social risk factors like socioeconomic status on this relationship remain unclear. The current study sought to clarify the moderating impact of socioeconomic status on the relation between low RHR in childhood and adolescence and subsequent legal system involvement by young adulthood.

Methods: A subset of twins and triplets from the Risk Factors for Antisocial Behavior (RFAB) project (N = 347) were utilized to test hypotheses. Logistic regression analyses were performed to test for a moderating effect of socioeconomic status on the relationship between RHR and later law enforcement involvement (trouble with police, arrest).

Results: Resting HR and SES were individually associated with an increased likelihood of being in trouble with the police and being arrested. In addition, RHR and SES in adolescence interacted to predict trouble with the police and arrest history by young adulthood, such that low RHR predicted these outcomes among adolescents who remained in low SES backgrounds.

Conclusions: Adolescents who remain in low socioeconomic backgrounds from childhood will be a particularly important group to target in terms of treatment efforts to prevent criminal behavior.

Purpose: Parental history of criminal offending is a major risk factor for later criminal behavior in children. Extensive research has also shown low resting heart rate (RHR), a moderately heritable biological variable, to be prospectively predictive of criminal behavior. Despite its status as a replicable risk factor, limited research exists on RHR's role in the intergenerational transmission of crime. Specifically, it remains unclear whether parent-child resemblance for biological characteristics such as RHR might play a role in intergenerational crime transmission.

Method: The current study was undertaken to clarify the role of RHR in the intergenerational transmission of crime, and test for moderating effects of socioeconomic status (SES) on its role, in a large Swedish population-based sample of fathers and their sons combined (N similar to 266,000).

Results: Beyond replicating prior work documenting paternal crime history and RHR as predictors of later offspring crime, we show tfhat father-son resemblance for RHR accounts in part for father-to-son crime transmission, and that familial SES does not moderate this transmission.

Conclusions: Our findings have important implications for understanding the role of biological and environmental influences in the intergenerational transmission of crime.

The incremental usefulness of the multidimensional psychopathy construct in predicting future antisocial behavior has rarely been tested in general population samples of children. To fill this significant knowledge gap, data were used from 1729 5- to 7-year old Swedish children who enrolled in a large Swedish prospective longitudinal study. Psychopathic traits and other risk factors at age 5–7 were assessed through teacher-, and parent-reports. Six years later, multiple informants (teacher, parents, and children) completed measures of antisocial behavior, including symptoms of conduct disorder, aggression, and bullying. Results show that the teacher-rated psychopathy total score (i.e., the composite of interpersonal, callous-unemotional, and behavioral-lifestyle traits) was predictive of severe and stable antisocial behavior, above and beyond levels of other risk factors, including conduct problems. Interaction effects suggested that the psychopathy total score at age 5–7 was predictive of future stable conduct disorder symptoms 6 years later, even in the absence of conduct problems at age 5–7. In conclusion, current findings indicate that the multidimensional child psychopathy construct identifies 5–7-year olds at risk for negative maladjustment in adolescence. Results support existing attempts of the developmental extension of psychopathy to young children.

Few studies have scrutinized the prospective relation between psychopathy and criminality in detained girls. Consequently, it is not well known if the psychopathy construct adds to the prediction of recidivism over other risk factors, such as conduct disorder and past criminality. To address this research gap, the current study examined data from 302 detained girls (M age = 16.2). Psychopathy total and component (i.e., narcissism, callous-unemotional, and impulsivity) scores were derived from the self-report version of the Antisocial Process Screening Device (APSD). Latent profile analysis was used to identify girls with high scores on the three components (tentatively labeled ‘putative psychopathic personality’). Five youth recidivism outcomes were measured (i.e., violent, serious non-violent, drug, total, and versatile), based on arrest charges that occurred before girls were 18 years of age. With a few exceptions, neither the ASPD total nor the APSD component scores contributed to the prediction of the recidivism outcomes. Girls with a putative psychopathic personality also were not at increased risk for recidivism. Findings overall suggest that the psychopathy construct should not be used for risk assessment purposes among detained girls, at least not when assessed via the self-report version of the APSD.

Research that simultaneously tests developmental associations between anxiety, depression, and delinquency is limited. The current study was designed to test the hypothesis that anxiety would inhibit involvement in delinquency, whilst involvement in delinquency would be a risk factor for later depression. During middle school, a large sample of Greek Cypriot adolescents completed measures of anxiety, depression, and delinquency across four waves (N = 1451 in wave 1: 50.1% girls, Mage = 12.12, SD = 0.55; N = 1224 in wave 4). Analyses of longitudinal data supported the study's hypotheses after controlling for the common variance among the variables at each point of measurement. Altogether, the current results showcase that anxiety and depression are inversely related to delinquency, in that depression positively predicted later delinquency, whereas anxiety negatively predicted delinquent behaviors. Further, delinquency was a risk factor for future depression, but not anxiety, pointing to a bidirectional association between delinquency and depression. A multi-group path model showed that findings held across sex, with one exception, being that the relation between delinquency and depression during early adolescence was only significant for girls. The present study demonstrates that future research must consider uni- and bi-directional effects when disentangling longitudinal associations between anxiety, depression, and delinquency.

Research investigating the developmental interrelations among symptoms of anxiety, depression, and conduct problems in early childhood is lacking. The present study aims to fill this significant knowledge gap. A large Swedish prospective longitudinal data set (SOFIA study) was utilized, in which approximately 2.000 children have been assessed by parents and school staff at four time points, beginning at ages 3–5 and the fourth assessment conducted at ages 8–10. Results showed that symptoms of anxiety and depression were positively related to conduct problems, both cross-sectionally and longitudinally, and among both boys and girls. However, when all other variables were controlled for in the path analysis, a different picture emerged. Cross-sectional unidirectional positive effects from conduct problems to depressive symptoms were identified at each time point, with the effect from conduct problems to depressive symptoms during middle childhood being only significant among girls. Furthermore, conduct problems predicted anxiety symptoms during middle childhood among both boys and girls. Neither depressive nor anxiety symptoms predicted conduct problems. These findings suggest that conduct problems are associated with increased risk for depressive and anxiety symptoms, and may contribute to the development of psychopathological symptoms during childhood.

Objectives: We examine how parental criminality is associated with offspring education at different educational stages from primary to tertiary education and conduct separate analyses for non-violent and violent crimes and incarceration, and for paternal and maternal criminality.

Methods: We use Swedish total population register data of 513,886 children and their parents and estimate both population-level linear probability models and cousin fixed-effects models.

Results: Parental criminality was negatively associated with all stages of offspring education. In population-level models accounting for parental education, the strongest associations were observed for parental violent crimes and incarceration with offspring secondary education completion (beta: -0.16 to -0.18). Cousin fixed-effects models suggested that family-level unobserved heterogeneity played a role in the associations as they were reduced when analyzing cousins differently exposed to parental criminality.

Conclusions: Parental criminality is negatively associated with offspring educational attainment, and the associations are in part due to shared familial factors. The association is different at different educational stages and for parental violent vs. non-violent crime.

This study aimed to test the predictive and incremental value of psychopathic trait dimensions in early childhood. To this end, a callous-unemotional (CU)-based approach was compared to the multidimensional psychopathic personality approach in predicting future and stable conduct problems (CP) and aggression, whilst controlling for well-established risk factors for child CP. Prospective longitudinal data were collected from a community sample of 2247 children (48.6% girls) aged three to six (Mage = 4.25; SD = 0.91) at the initial assessment. Participants were followed annually for two years, with information provided by parents. Children were assigned to six mutually exclusive groups based on their baseline levels of psychopathic traits and conduct problems. Results showed that, after accounting for sociodemographic variables, temperamental features (e.g., fearlessness), and ADHD symptoms, children scoring high in all psychopathic traits and high in CP were at increased risk to display future and stable CP, reactive and proactive aggression, followed by the group of children high in CU traits and CP. Future research on child psychopathy may benefit from considering the constellation of co-occurring interpersonal, affective and behavioral psychopathic traits, and could inform developmental models aiming to explain heterogeneity in child CP.

Purpose: This twin study examined the structure of genetic and environmental influences on aggression and rule-breaking in order to examine change and stability across the span of childhood to mid-adolescence.

Methods: Behavioral assessments were conducted at two time points: age 9-10. years and 14-15. years. Using behavioral genetics biometric modeling, the longitudinal structure of influences was investigated.

Results: Aggression and rule-breaking were found to be influenced by a latent common factor of antisocial behavior (ASB) within each wave of data collection. The variance in the childhood-age common factor of ASB was influenced by 41% genetics, 40% shared environment and 19% nonshared environment. In adolescence, 41% of variance in the common factor were novel and entirely genetic, while the remainder of variance was stable across time. Additionally, both aggression and rule-breaking within each wave were found to have unique influences not common across subscales or across waves, highlighting specificity of genetic and environmental effects on different problem behaviors at both ages.

Conclusions: This research sheds light on the commonality of influences on different forms of antisocial behavior. Future research into interventions for antisocial behavior problems in youth could focus on adolescence-specific environmental influences.

Background: We examined associations of adverse perinatal events with offspring violent and non-violent criminal convictions in men and women.

Methods: All singleton births between 1973 and 1995 (n =1,146,570 men, n =1,085,217 women) were identified through Swedish population-based registers. Information about adverse perinatal events was retrieved from the Medical Birth Register. Outcomes were criminal convictions collected from the National Crime Register. We estimated absolute and relative risks of being convicted of criminal convictions using the Kaplan-Meier method and survival analyses for men and women separately. We also tested for differences in magnitudes of associations for men versus women.

Results: Several adverse perinatal events were associated with an increased risk of violent and non-violent criminal convictions in both men and women. Associations between low birth weight, smallness relative to gestational age and preterm birth with non-violent criminal convictions were statistically significantly higher for men than for women. There was a dose-dependent association between adverse perinatal events with violent and non-violent criminal convictions for both men and women, indicated by the strengthened magnitude of HR estimates with exposure to an increasing number of adverse perinatal events.

Conclusions: Adverse perinatal events are associated with violent and non-violent criminal convictions in men and women, with some differences in risk estimates between sexes. Findings are compatible with theoretical accounts implicating disruption of the neurodevelopment during the perinatal period.

This article describes the results of a feedback system designed to improve performance for a Swedish traffic police unit and examined whether such a feedback system was beneficial or detrimental to the attitudes of the officers. As in many Western countries, government organizations are being required to demonstrate their effectiveness with quantitative performance measures. An approach called the Productivity Measurement and Enhancement System (ProMES) was used with three groups of Swedish Traffic Police to do this. ProMES is a method for identifying unit's objectives, developing measures for these objectives, and using this information as feedback. ProMES was developed with these police units and feedback from the system was used over a four-year period. Results indicate that there were substantial increases in performance. There were also decreases in accidents, injuries, and fatalities compared both to baseline and to comparison groups in Sweden. These improvements were made with fewer and fewer police officers each year. © 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Purpose: To examine prognostic and incremental values of grandiose-deceitful interpersonal style, callous-unemotional traits and impulsivity-need for stimulation, and their ability to predict conduct problems and different types of aggressive behavior above and beyond well-established risk factors, including early childhood hyperactivity, aggression, and parenting styles in a community sample of very young children.

Methods: Using data from the ECLAT study, a 5-year prospective/longitudinal study of 175 elementary school children in Croatia (80 boys/95 girls; MFirst_assessment = 5.28 years and MLast_assessment = 10.33 years), hierarchical regression analyses were conducted to evaluate the utility of children's psychopathy features.

Results: Analyses revealed that, after controlling for individual and parenting risk factors at age 5, only impulsivity-need for stimulation was an independent, albeit weak, predictor of conduct problems at age 10, but not aggression. In addition, the multidimensional child psychopathy construct (i.e., high levels on all three psychopathic traits) at age 5 in combination with concurrent conduct problems was the strongest predictor of future negative outcomes above and beyond other risk factors, but only of conduct problems.

Conclusions: After both individual and parenting factors are taken into account, psychopathic traits individually have limited usefulness when predicting future antisocial behavior but may be important in prediction when all three psychopathic traits are elevated and co-occur with conduct problems in a community sample of young children.

A total of nine studies put the psychopathy construct to a stringent test by examining the predictive ability while controlling for common risk factors for negative outcomes. In this way, the special section studies shed light on the important issue as to whether psychopathy as a construct offers something above and beyond common risk factors. Eight of the nine studies showed in different ways, in different countries, with different developmental/ age periods, and with different measures and conceptualizations that psychopathic personality often was pre-dictive of negative outcomes after adjusting for common risk variables. Five studies examined the association between psychopathic personality and negative outcomes in young children. All five of these studies found psychopathic personality to be predictive above and beyond common risk factors. Three studies examined psychopathy and its relation to negative outcomes from adolescence forward. Two of the three studies in this age band found psychopathy to be predictive of negative outcomes after controlling for common risk factors. Finally, one study examined psychopathy from adulthood forward in a specialized population and found that Factor 2 of the PCL-R was predictive of recidivism above and beyond the commonly used DSM diagnosis of ASPD. These findings support the notion that individuals with psychopathic personality follow a hazardous course impacting their own well-being as well as negatively impacting society. The implications of the findings are discussed in further detail and directions for future research are considered.

Background: Youth offenders have a high risk of being injured or dying prematurely. However, few studies have considered the role of imprisonment and potential childhood risk factors for these high rates.

Aim: To examine the risk of unintentional injury and premature death in non-imprisoned and imprisoned youth offenders, and to examine the role of parental criminal convictions and psychiatric disorders and own childhood psychiatric disorders.

Methods: All individuals (N = 1,839,711) born in Sweden between 1978 and 1996 were identified using Swedish population-based registers. The exposure was criminal conviction between ages 15-20 years of age.

Results: Imprisoned youth offenders had the highest risk for unintentional injury (HR = 2.29 [2.19-2.40]) and premature death (HR = 10.76 [9.52-12.16]), followed by nonimprisoned youth offenders, compared to non -convicted youth. All childhood risk factors increased the risk for these outcomes among non-imprisoned youth offenders. Among imprisoned youth offenders, parental criminal convictions and parental psychiatric disorders increased the risk for unintentional injury, and parental psychiatric disorders and own childhood psychiatric disorders increased the risk for premature death.

Conclusions: Our study shows there are robust modifiable childhood risk factors for injury and mortality among youth offenders. However, the importance of them to assess risk may differ between non-imprisoned and imprisoned youth offenders.

Background: Psychiatric diagnoses are important risk factors for criminal convictions, but few longitudinal studies have examined comorbidity patterns in relation to youth criminal convictions.

Aim: To explore associations between specific psychiatric diagnoses (substance use disorder (SUD), ADHD, depression, PTSD, intellectual disabilities (ID), and autism spectrum disorders (ASD)) and comorbidities of internalizing, externalizing, or neurodevelopmental diagnoses (NDD) in relation to risk of non-violent or violent criminal convictions in youth, including potential sex differences.

Methods: Data on 1,411,538 individuals born in Sweden (1985–1998) were obtained from national population-based registers. Exposure was psychiatric diagnoses and outcome was criminal convictions between ages 15 and 20.

Results: 17% of individuals had a psychiatric diagnosis, of whom 20% were convicted of a crime. All diagnoses, except ID and ASD, increased the risk of non-violent and violent crimes. Comorbidities of externalizing and internalizing diagnoses heightened the risk compared to single diagnoses. NDD increased the risk among SUD, depression, and PTSD, while NDD comorbid with another NDD decreased the risk for criminal convictions.

Conclusion: Of the three comorbidity categories, externalizing disorders heightened risk the most, followed by internalizing disorders. This study highlights specific risk patterns for criminal convictions related to comorbidities, and to crime type and sex.

Background: Research on the association between depression and crime is limited regarding different types of crime and severity of crime.

Aim: Using Swedish national register data, we explored the association between depression and various crime outcomes and the severity of crime.

Methods: We identified 72,057 individuals with an outpatient depression diagnosis between 2001 and 2013. Individuals with depression were age-, sex-, and socioeconomic status (SES)-matched to undiagnosed population controls (n = 1,080,855). Logistic regression models estimated odds of any, violent, property, drug-related and non-violent crime, as well as the severity of crime.

Results: In fully adjusted models, individuals with depression had significantly higher odds of any conviction (adjusted OR [adjOR] 1.66 [95 % CI 1.60-1.71]). This pattern persisted across all crime types (violent, property, drug-related, non-violent), and for crime severity, including increased odds for longer sentences and multiple convictions.

Conclusions: Individuals with depression had an increased risk for convictions across all crime types and more severe crimes. Our results emphasize the importance of early identification of risk factors and targeted treatments, and the necessity for clarification of the underlying mechanisms of our findings.

Purpose: Previous studies that have explored the relationship between parenting style and children's antisocial behavior have generally found significant bidirectional effects, whereby parenting behaviors influence their child's antisocial outcomes, but a child's behaviors also lead to changes in parenting style.

Methods: The present study investigated the genetic and environmental underpinnings of the longitudinal relationship between negative parent-to-child affect and psychopathic personality in a sample of 1,562 twins. Using a biometrical cross-lag analysis, bidirectional effects were investigated across two waves of assessment when the twins were ages 9-10 and 14-15, utilizing both caregiver and youth self-reports.

Results: Results demonstrated that negative parental affect observed at ages 9-10 influenced the child's later psychopathic personality at ages 14-15, based on both caregiver and youth self-reports. For these 'parent-driven effects', both genetic and non-shared environmental factors were important in the development of later psychopathic personality during adolescence. There were additional 'child-driven effects' such that children's psychopathic personality at ages 9-10 influenced negative parent-to-child affect at ages 14-15, but only within caregiver reports.

Conclusions: Thus, children's genetically influenced psychopathic personality seemed to evoke later parental negativity at ages 14-15, highlighting the importance of investigating bidirectional effects in parent-child relationships to understand the development of these traits.

Purpose: We investigated whether childhood psychopathic personality traits predicted subsequent self-reported and register-based criminality and psychiatric outcomes when childhood behavioral problems (conduct disorder [CD] and ADHD symptoms) were accounted for.

Methods: In the Child and Adolescent Twin Study in Sweden, parents rated their children's (n = 12,394) psychopathic personality traits, CD, and ADHD symptoms at age 9/12. We studied the risk for self-reported delinquency, problematic substance use, and anxiety/depression at age 18. The sample was also linked to nationwide registers where we studied suspicion of crimes, and diagnoses of substance use disorders and anxiety/depression up to age 21.

Results: Childhood psychopathic personality traits were associated with self-reported delinquency (β = 0.65, 95% CI: 0.41–0.90) and suspicions of violent (hazard ratio [HR] = 1.33, [1.23–1.45]) and non-violent (HR = 1.28, [1.22–1.36]) crimes. The estimates were attenuated, but remained elevated for delinquency and violent crimes after accounting for childhood behavioral problems. Psychopathic personality traits were associated with substance use problems and anxiety/depression, but these associations were mainly explained by childhood behavioral problems.

Conclusions: Psychopathic personality traits were a risk marker for criminality and psychiatric outcomes, particularly in children with co-occurring behavioral problems. However, the independent contribution of psychopathic personality traits was modest at best, when behavioral problems were accounted for.

Purpose: This study investigated genetic and environmental commonalities and differences between aggressive and non-aggressive antisocial behavior (ASB) in male and female child and adolescent twins, based on a newly developed self-report questionnaire with good reliability and external validity -- the Self-Report Delinquency Interview (SR-DI).

Methods: Subjects were 780 pairs of twins assessed through laboratory interviews at three time points in a longitudinal study, during which the twins were: (1) ages 9-10. years; (2) age 11-13. years, and (3) age 16-18. years.

Results: Sex differences were repeatedly observed for mean levels of ASB. In addition, diverse change patterns of genetic and environmental emerged, as a function of sex and form of ASB, during the development from childhood to adolescence. Although there was some overlap in etiologies of aggressive and non-aggressive ASB, predominantly in shared environmental factors, their genetic overlap was moderate and the non-shared environmental overlap was low.

Conclusions: Taken together, these results reinforced the importance of differentiating forms of ASB and further investigating sex differences in future research. These results should be considered in future comparisons between youth self-report and parental or teacher report of child and adolescent behavior, and may help elucidate commonalities and differences among informants.