Child Delinquency Research Articles

Post-traumatic stress and associated disorders among Vietnam veterans: the significance of combat exposure and social support.

The hypothesis is tested that individuals exposed to traumatic stress who currently have lower social support have higher rates of post-traumatic stress and associated disorders. To test this, the current prevalence of five psychiatric disorders, including post-traumatic stress, generalized anxiety, depression, alcohol abuse, and drug abuse, were studied among a random sample of veterans who served in Vietnam (N = 2,490) and a random sample of "era" veterans who did not (N = 1,972). Logistic regression was used to analyze each disorder, controlling for past combat exposure, current social status, childhood delinquency, military adjustment, and current social support. Combat exposure was the best predictor of post-traumatic stress and was also associated with anxiety and depression, but not alcohol or drug abuse. Substance abuse was associated with childhood delinquency, and the best predictor of drug abuse was illicit Army drug use. Lower social support was associated with all disorders, except drug abuse. Although the causal nexus is not clear in this case, this study suggests that future research and clinical interventions should not overlook the significance of social support among victims of traumatic stress.

Post‐traumatic stress and associated disorders among Vietnam veterans: The significance of combat exposure and social support

AbstractThe hypothesis is tested that individuals exposed to traumatic stress who currently have lower social support have higher rates of post‐traumatic stress and associated disorders. To test this, the current prevalence of five psychiatric disorders, including post‐traumatic stress, generalized anxiety, depression, alcohol abuse, and drug abuse, were studied among a random sample of veterans who served in Vietnam (N = 2,490) and a random sample of “era” veterans who did not (N = 1,972). Logistic regression was used to analyze each disorder, controlling for past combat exposure, current social status, childhood delinquency, military adjustment, and current social support. Combat exposure was the best predictor of post‐traumatic stress and was also associated with anxiety and depression, but not alcohol or drug abuse. Substance abuse was associated with childhood delinquency, and the best predictor of drug abuse was illicit Army drug use. Lower social support was associated with all disorders, except drug abuse. Although the causal nexus is not clear in this case, this study suggests that future research and clinical interventions should not overlook the significance of social support among victims of traumatic stress.

Problems and solutions in longitudinal and experimental treatment studies of child psychopathology and delinquency.

This article identifies questions in child psychopathology and delinquency that can best be answered by using longitudinal data and discusses the advantages and problems of longitudinal studies. The article also reviews methodological issues arising in longitudinal research on child psychopathology and proposes solutions to problems. Retrospective and prospective designs are contrasted with the accelerated longitudinal design. It is concluded that more longitudinal studies of child psychopathology including experimental treatment interventions are needed, with repeated data collection from a variety of sources and several years of data before and after the interventions. Such studies, in addition to the traditional longitudinal studies, are likely to improve the understanding of child psychopathology and of factors that influence and reduce serious outcomes for children and adolescents.

Crime in the Making

This explanation of crime and deviance over the life course is based on the re-analysis of a classic set of data: Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck's mid-century study of 500 delinquents and 500 non-delinquents from childhood to adulthood. More than five years ago, Robert Sampson and John Laub dusted off 60 cartons of the Gluecks' data that had been stored in the basement of the Harvard Law School and undertook a lengthy process of recoding, computerizing, and reanalyzing it. On the basis of their findings, Sampson and Laub developed a theory of informal social control over the life course which integrates three ideas. First, social bonds to family and school inhibit delinquency in childhood and adolescence. Second, there is continuity in antisocial and deviant behaviour from childhood through adulthood across various dimensions, such as crime, alcohol abuse, divorce and unemployment. And finally, despite these continuities, attachment to the labour force and cohesive marriage sharply mitigate criminal activities. Sampson and Laub thus acknowledge the importance of childhood behaviours and individual differences, but reject the implication that adult social factors have little relevance. They seek to account for both stability and change in crime and deviance throughout the life course. Crime in the making challenges several major ideas found in contemporary theory and aims to provide an important new foundation for rethinking criminal justice policy.

Maternal smoking and deviant behaviour in 16-year-olds: A personality hypothesis

A woman smoking 10 or more cigarettes a day from the fourth month of pregnancy was a highly significant predictor of behavioural problems, including delinquency in children 16 yrs later, social class controlled. Intervening health indicators of this risk are difficult to identify, and it is speculated that the linkage is provided by unmeasured personality factors.

The Prevention of Delinquency in Children

The country's established system of prevention of delinquency among minors has not been very effective so far. Efforts to improve its success rate have been hindered by lack of organizational liaison, functional lack of coordination in the work of the schools and the law-enforcement organs, by interdepartmental slip-ups, and by the lack of specialists having the appropriate pedagogical and psychological training for working with adolescents. There is as yet no precisely defined complex of social-ecological, ideological-upbringing, pedagogical, legal, and medical-psychological measures serving to improve the qualitative level of prevention work among young people.

Crime and Deviance over the Life Course: The Salience of Adult Social Bonds

Analyzing the natural histories of two samples of boys that differ dramatically in childhood delinquency, we test a model of crime and deviance over the life course. The first hypothesis is that childhood antisocial behavior predicts problems in adult development across a wide variety of dimensions. Second, we argue that social bonds in adulthood--to work and family--explain changes in crime and deviance over the life span. The longitudinal data were reconstructed from the Gluecks' classic study of delinquent and non-delinquent males from childhood to age 32. Childhood delinquency is linked to adult crime, alcohol abuse, general deviance, economic dependency, educational failure, unemployment, divorce, and even charges in the military. Despite this continuity, job stability and strong marital attachment in adulthood inhibit adult criminal and deviant behavior. The results support a model of informal social control that recognizes both stability and change in antisocial behavior over the life course. Language: en

Child Abuse and Delinquency: The Empirical and Theoretical Links

There is an association between child abuse and delinquency, but problems with study design, definition, and method currently prevent a definitive understanding of the sequences and causal relations involved. The evidence indicates that a bidirectional relationship exists between child abuse and delinquency. A framework that uses Patterson's analysis of coercive processes suggests that child characteristics, parental inadequacies, and external stressors each play a part in child abuse and delinquency.

Delinquency in children.

Delinquency among children is not a problem only in Western countries. Psychosocial analysis of inmates of an approved school revealed that broken home was the reason for the emotional stress which triggered antisocial behaviour. Children want to be with their parents inspite of the injustice done to them.

An Exploratory Study of the Connection of Mother's Age at Childbearing to Her Children's Delinquency in Four Data Sets

In response to recent findings of a connection between mother's age at her first child's birth and her children's delinquency, knowledge of the increasing number of early childbearing mothers, and policy recommendations to confront related issues, the present article reports on an exploratory analysis of four data sets to document and understand the association. Although in some subgroups mother's age is related to delinquency, the relationship is heavily conditioned by presence of the child's father. The indirect effects of mother's age through biological, family dynamic, family size and structure, and community-level variables are also examined. Results are discussed separately for different racial and ethnic groups when the data allow. Conclusions include both recommendations for future research and a discussion of delinquency prevention policy.

Personality and antisocial behaviour: A long-term study

The relationship between the personality components of psychoticism, extraversion and neuroticism, and levels of conduct disorder, delinquency and therapy responsiveness in children is investigated. A series of studies reporting short- and long-term results test Eysenck's (1970) argument that extraverts, because of their lower levels of conditionability, should feature more prominently in groups showing higher levels of conduct disorder or delinquency. The extension of that argument to include the role of psychoticism (Eysenck H.J. and Eysenck S.B.G., Psychoticism as a Dimension of Personality, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1976) is also subjected to experimental test. Two alternative conceptions of the part played by neuroticism, either that it acts as an amplifying device (high N) or as a filter against pressure to change (low N), are considered. The results support the importance of including personality factors in the study of antisocial behaviour in children.

Family Factors as Correlates and Predictors of Juvenile Conduct Problems and Delinquency

A meta-analysis was performed of concurrent and longitudinal studies on the relation of family factors to juvenile conduct problems and delinquency. Analyses of longitudinal data show that socialization variables, such as lack of parental supervision, parental rejection, and parent-child involvement, are among the most powerful predictors of juvenile conduct problems and delinquency. Medium-strength predictors include background variables such as parents' marital relations and parental criminality. Weaker predictors are lack of parental discipline, parental health, and parental absence. The effect of these factors seems to be about the same for boys and for girls. Analyses of concurrent studies comparing delinquents with nondelinquents, and aggressive children with nonaggressive children, largely parallel these findings. Data from concurrent normal samples, however, show less importance for parental child socialization practices and relatively more importance for the child's rejection of the parent and the parent's rejection of the child. A small proportion of families produces a disproportionate number of delinquents. The presence of one child with delinquency, aggression, or covert conduct problems increases the probability that other children in the family will exhibit those behaviors. Deficiencies in parenting skills are associated with the seriousness of the child's delinquency. Treatment studies demonstrate that systematic changes in parenting behaviors can lessen the frequency of a child's conduct problems and that of siblings and, to a lesser extent, reduce involvement in delinquent activities.

Health Hazards of Cow's Milk

To the Editor.— In a recent Pediatrics' supplement, Oski1 reviewed potential hazards of bovine milk-feeding and came to the conclusion that: Whole bovine milk should not be fed to infants during the first year of life because of its association with occult gastrointestinal bleeding, iron deficiency anemia, and cow's milk allergy. The consumption of whole milk after the first year of life should be discouraged because of its potential role in a variety of disorders including atherosclerosis, recurrent abdominal pain of childhood, cataracts, milk-borne infections, and juvenile delinquency.

Pic Delinquency Scale

This study further evaluated the Personality Inventory for Children's Delinquency Scale (DLQ) in terms of its dual purpose as a measure of delinquent tendencies and as an aid in identifying male and female adolescents who commit serious offenses. The DLQ cutoff scores were supported as identifying nonapprehended adolescents who showed stronger delinquent tendencies, defined as reporting significantly more frequent delinquent acts. The male and female groups scoring above the DLQ cutoff scores were found to report significantly more delinquent acts and to score below the delinquency cutoff scores of the CPI Socialization Scale. The DLQ cutoff scores were not supported, however, as identifying “serious offenders,” defined as those adolescents who reported at least one offense rated as a serious crime.

Neurosis and Delinquency in Children

A discussion of the problems of neurotic and delin quent children. Their reactions are normally the opposite ends of the spectrum, with the "normal" child fitting in between. How to help both extremes to normalize.

The Uses of Residential Care

The current trend of seeking community solutions to pioblerns of disturbance and delinquency in children may lead to the avoidance of misuse of residential care as a valuable therapeutic tool. The cases cited in this article illustrate effective uses of residential placement.

Exploring the Relationship between Child Abuse and Delinquency. Edited by Robert J. Hunner and Yvonne Elder Walker. Montclair, N.J.: Allanheld, Osmun & Co., 1981. 265 pp. $23.95

Exploring the Relationship between Child Abuse and Delinquency. Edited by Robert J. Hunner and Yvonne Elder Walker. Montclair, N.J.: Allanheld, Osmun & Co., 1981. 265 pp. $23.95

Foster children grown up: Parameters of care and adult delinquency

The study was concerned with the relationship of time in foster care and the number of placements to adult delinquency of former foster children. A 10 to 11 year follow-up of a birth cohort of 491 children discharged from wardship on reaching their 18th birthday showed the following: Length of time in care was not related to convictions, or to the numbers of court appearances and imprisonments. Shorter care was associated, however, with sooner first convictions of males and later first convictions of females. The number of placements was related positively to convictions; to the numbers of female but not male court appearances; to sooner first convictions of males and later first convictions of females; however, it was not related to imprisonments. It was deduced from the findings that, except for time to first conviction, the age of the child at committal to care and the reasons for committal are not related to adult delinquency. The association of the number of placements with adult delinquency was hypothesized to be explainable in terms of an underlying factor, common to both, of the personality characteristics of the ex-foster children. These characteristics were not seen as due to placement breakdowns, but as possibly being intensified by such breakdowns. The findings were discussed in the light of the literature.

Effects of Population Change on Family Life and the Child: Implications for Home Economics Programs in Nigeria

Marking 1979 as the International Year of the Child various organizations and professional associations dealt extensively with parental care child delinquency child abuse and related topics. Another vital dimension is often neglected however: the integration of population and home and family life education into school curricula. This paper outlines some of the population related factors and effects upon the family and child; and proposes a rationale for integration of population education into the school curricula in general and in particular the home economics curriculum. Because of their vested interests and wealth of experience in family life home economists are challenged to take the lead in planning and providing curriculum materials and to promote population education in the schools today. (authors modified)

Book Review: Child Guidance and Delinquency in a London Borough

Book Review: Child Guidance and Delinquency in a London Borough