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Are there transcultural mechanisms linking childhood vulnerabilities and criminal behaviour in emerging adulthood?
Fri, September 5, 8:00 to 9:15am, Communications Building (CN), CN 2103Abstract
Almost all the studies that help to define policies and interventions with the aim to prevent and stop crime are based on data from a very exclusive segment of the world population: developed Anglo-Saxon Western societies. Can we adequately inform about prevention and intervention against criminal behavior based on these studies? The few highly diverse cross-cultural studies were mostly carried out based on official records and combined only data from two or three Western countries. Therefore, the main objective of this study is to examine whether different individual (e.g., addiction), familial (e.g., household dysfunction), and contextual (e.g., peers) vulnerabilities are associated with criminal variety in young adults living in ten vastly diverse countries located across five continents, after accounting for sex, age, justice status, and cross-national differences. Participants were 4,182 young adults aged between 18 to 20 years (mean age= 18.96, SD= .81), 67% of whom were female. All of them answered the Psychosocial and Family Situation Questionnaire, created to evaluate current and past psychosocial and family vulnerabilities (deviant peers, addiction, juvenile justice problems, raised in a foster home, etc.). They also completed the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) questionnaire (child maltreatment and household dysfunctions in childhood), and the Criminal Variety Index, evaluating the variety of criminal acts committed during the previous 12 months. Results showed that five dynamic childhood vulnerabilities experienced were predictors of criminal variety in the global sample, namely child maltreatment, family problems, alcohol/substance abuse, delinquent peers and school problems. The strongest predictor of criminal variety was the number of friends who had been arrested. These findings can be used to advance knowledge about intercultural intervention programs aimed at preventing criminal behaviour and promoting desistance from crime.