Abstract
Child abuse and neglect, considered criminal acts under the Criminal Code of Canada, play an important role in substance use, violence, and other criminal behaviour in adulthood. We adopted the life course perspective to identify modifiable contextual influences and co-occurring individual, social, and familial determinants associated with adult criminality. Using in-depth interview data, a sub-sample of 13 women who had recently experienced intimate partner violence, recounted their experiences of childhood abuse, their own substance use or criminality, as well as implications of these factors on their children’s life trajectories. For the purposes of this paper criminality was defined as child abuse and neglect, domestic violence, illegal substance use and underage alcohol use. Our objective was to explore, in our data: (1) patterns and trajectories of criminality from childhood to adulthood among women who were victims of violence, and (2) cumulative effects of early life exposures on experiences of criminality; with the aim of describing the life course perspective as a useful framework to understand criminality along the life trajectory. The analysis was not designed to demonstrate causal connections between early childhood and adulthood experiences of criminality. Rather we generated qualitative and quantitative hypotheses to guide future research in the field. Implications for research and interventions are discussed.
Highlights
The theory of intergenerational transmission of violence describes the tendency of exposure to violence or aggression in one generation to increase the likelihood of violence or aggression in the generation
The second aspect of the life course framework that we explored in the analysis of criminality was the concept of pathways and trajectories
The approach embraces the multidimensionality of criminality because rather than attribute the cause to a single variable, the life course approach integrates ecological, psychological, and economic perspectives into its treatment of crime etiology [34]
Summary
The theory of intergenerational transmission of violence describes the tendency of exposure to violence or aggression in one generation to increase the likelihood of violence or aggression in the generation. Crime theories would suggest that family disorganization and poor parenting practices result in weakened social bonds for the child and low self-control [2,3,4,5]. Over the last three decades, there has been growing support for the argument that there is an additional genetic basis to the transmission of personality traits related to criminality, such as aggression, anti-social behaviour, and impulsivity [7,8,9,10]. More recent evidence suggests that though earlier research which partitioned genetic and social environmental transmission of such traits has been useful in helping to demonstrate the validity of both paradigms in the development of criminality, the reality is more complex [8,11]. The dynamic interplay between individual genotype and the environment during childhood is thought to contribute to the development of criminal behaviour in adulthood
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