Jukka Savolainen

Background: Although a pathway from childhood behavioural disorders to criminal offending is well established, the aetiological processes remain poorly understood. Also, it is not clear if attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is predictive of crime in the absence of comorbid disruptive behaviour disorder (DBD).Hypothesis: We examined two research questions: (1) Does ADHD have a unique effect on the risk of criminal offending, independently of DBD? (2) Is the effect of childhood behavioural disorders on criminal offending direct or mediated by adolescent processes related to school experience, substance misuse and peers?Method: Structural equation modelling, with latent variables, was applied to longitudinally collected data on 4644 men from the 1986 Northern Finland Birth Cohort Study.Results: Both ADHD and DBD separately predicted felony conviction risk. Most of these effects were mediated by adolescent alcohol use and low academic performance. The effect of DBD was stronger and included a direct pathway to criminal offending.Conclusion: Findings were more consistent with the life course mediation hypothesis of pathways into crime than the behavioural continuity path, in that the effects of each disorder category were mediated by heavy drinking and educational failure. Preventing these adolescent risk outcomes may be an effective approach to closing pathways to criminal behaviour amongst behaviourally disordered children. However, as there was some evidence of a direct pathway from DBD, effective treatments targeting this disorder are also expected to reduce criminal offending. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This research examined intergenerational educational mobility as an antecedent of criminal offending. Anomie theory and the general theory of crime assume an inverse association between intergenerational mobility and criminal behaviour. In addition, Moffitt’s taxonomic theory and general strain theory expect intergenerational continuity in low educational attainment to be especially criminogenic. We examined the hypothesized associations with total birth cohort data from Finland. The results suggest that neither downward nor upward mobility is an important correlate of crime. For most individuals, the educational background of the family of origin was unrelated to offending net of personal attainment. As an important exception, parents’ educational attainment buffered the strong positive association between offspring educational marginalization and crime. Among those who did not pursue education beyond comprehensive school, having a parent with minimal educational credentials doubled the risk of serious offending compared with those with university-educated parents. Evidence from multivariate analysis suggests that this interaction effect is related to family adversity and psychological risk characteristics.

Does employment promote desistance from crime? Most perspectives assume that individuals who become employed are less likely to offend than those who do not. The critical issue has to do with the timing of employment transitions in the criminal trajectory. The turning point hypothesis expects reductions in offending after job entries, whereas the maturation perspective assumes desistance to have occurred ahead of successful transitions to legitimate work. Focusing on a sample of recidivist males who became employed during 2001–2006 (N = 783), smoothing spline regression techniques were used to model changes in criminal offending around the point of entry to stable employment. Consistent with the maturation perspective, the results showed that most offenders had desisted prior to the employment transition and that becoming employed was not associated with further reductions in criminal behavior. Consistent with the turning point hypothesis, we identified a subset of offenders who became employed during an active phase of the criminal career and experienced substantial reductions in criminal offending thereafter. However, this trajectory describes less than 2 percent of the sample. The patterns observed in this research suggest that transition to employment is best viewed as a consequence rather than as a cause of criminal desistance.

Data from the 1986 Northern Finland Birth Cohort Study (n = 4,645) were used to examine the influence of mid‐adolescent (age 15) school outcomes on late‐adolescent (ages 17–19) risk of criminal conviction. Consistent with social‐developmental theories of offending, we found that poor academic performance and reduced school attachment increase the risk of criminal conviction independently of pre‐existing differences in antisocial propensity and other confounding factors identified in prior research. Moreover, in support of an integrated model, our research suggests that academic performance and school attachment mediate the effects of childhood antisociality and learning difficulties on late‐adolescent risk of criminal conviction. The implications of findings for policy and future research are discussed.

In this study, we argue that the traditional paradigm used to explain the leniency accorded to women offenders in US criminal courts ignores advances in feminist research which suggest how normative patterns that reinforce gender identities can and do change. Using data from Finland, a society generally characterized by more gender equality than is found in the USA, we examine whether an offender's sex has a significant impact on the decision to imprison. Controlling for relevant legal and social characteristics, and considering the conditional effects of labour force participation and parental responsibilities, the findings show that the often-noted preferential treatment given to female offenders, relative to their male counterparts in the USA, is not present in Finland.

This research presents an application of Sampson and Laub's theory of age-graded informal social control in a national environment in which the structural and cultural contexts of work and family are radically different from the United States, where the theory was developed. Focused on a sample of Finnish recidivists, the study examines the role of work, parenthood, marriage and cohabitation in the process of criminal desistance. The study finds empirical support for the basic assumptions of the theory as well as the general contention that the restraining capacity of adult life course transitions is sensitive to the cultural context in which they are embedded.