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https://hdl.handle.net/2440/137608
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Type: | Journal article |
Title: | Relationships between parental mental illness and/or offending and offspring contact with the police in childhood: Findings from a longitudinal record-linkage study |
Author: | Athanassiou, U. Green, M.J. Tzoumakis, S. Whitten, T. Laurens, K.R. Harris, F. Carr, V.J. Dean, K. |
Citation: | Criminal Behaviour and Mental Health, 2023; 33(1):72-84 |
Publisher: | Wiley |
Issue Date: | 2023 |
ISSN: | 0957-9664 1471-2857 |
Statement of Responsibility: | Ulrika Athanassiou, Melissa J. Green, Stacy Tzoumakis, Tyson Whitten, Kristin R. Laurens, Felicity Harris, Vaughan J. Carr, Kimberlie Dean |
Abstract: | BACKGROUND: Parental offending and mental illness are associated with an increased risk of criminal behaviour in offspring during adolescence and adulthood, but the impact of such problems on younger children, including children's experiences of victimisation, is less well known. AIM: To investigate the associations between parental offending and mental illness recorded prior to their offspring's age of 5 years and their offspring's contact with police as a 'person of interest', 'victim' or 'witness' between ages 5 and 13 years. METHODS: Our sample consisted of 72,771 children and their parents drawn from the New South Wales Child Development Study, an Australian longitudinal population-based record linkage study. Logistic regression analyses were conducted to examine associations between parental factors and offspring's police contact. Separate models examined the relationships between maternal or paternal offending and mental illness, as well as the combination among either or both parents, as the independent variables, and their child's police contact as the dependent variable. RESULTS: Parental offending and mental illness were each individually associated with indices of police contact among offspring. Stronger associations were observed when both offending and mental illness were present together (in either parent, or when one parent had both exposures). Stronger associations were evident for mothers with both factors across all offspring police contact types, relative to fathers with both factors, in fully adjusted models; that is, children of mothers with both factors were over four times as likely to have contact with police as a 'person of interest' (OR = 4.29; 95% CI = 3.75-4.92) and over three times as likely to have contact as a victim (OR = 3.35; 95% CI = 3.01-3.74) or witness (OR = 3.58; 95% CI = 3.03-4.24), than children whose mothers had no history of offending or mental illness. CONCLUSIONS: Children with a parental history of offending and mental illness in early life are at an increased likelihood of early police contact as young as 5-13 years of age; it is vital that this is taken as a signal to help them and their affected families according to need. |
Keywords: | children's contact with the police parental mental illness parental offending person of interest victim witness |
Rights: | © 2023 The Authors. Criminal Behaviour and Mental Health published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made. |
DOI: | 10.1002/cbm.2274 |
Grant ID: | http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/LP110100150 http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/DP170101403 http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/FT170100294 http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/DE210100113 http://purl.org/au-research/grants/nhmrc/1058652 http://purl.org/au-research/grants/nhmrc/1148055 http://purl.org/au-research/grants/nhmrc/1133833 http://purl.org/au-research/grants/nhmrc/1175408 |
Published version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/cbm.2274 |
Appears in Collections: | Gender Studies and Social Analysis publications |
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hdl_137608.pdf | Published version | 262.3 kB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
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