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Childhood Explanatory Factors for Adolescent Offending: a Cross-national Comparison Based on Official Records in London, Pittsburgh, and Zurich

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Abstract

This study compares childhood explanatory factors for adolescent offending according to official records obtained in three longitudinal projects conducted in three different countries: the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development, the Pittsburgh Youth Study, and the Zurich Project on the Social Development from Childhood to Adulthood. This is the first comparison of a great variety of explanatory factors for recorded offending measured in three different geographic areas and different generations. Several common explanatory factors were found in the three projects, and they seem to be generalizable across time and context. Common explanatory factors for offending included individual factors such as high impulsivity, attention deficit, and low school achievement. Childrearing explanatory factors included poor supervision, physical discipline, and parental conflict. Socioeconomic explanatory factors included low family income and divorced parents. Parental imprisonment was also a common risk factor among the three studies. Replicable childhood predictors of youth offending should be targeted in prevention.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the juvenile prosecution supervision office of the canton of Zurich (Oberjugendanwaltschaft), specifically chief juvenile prosecutor Marcel Riesen-Kupperand Carmine Delli Gatti. We are also grateful to Nicole Jehle and Sévérine Suter from the z-proso project team who collected and coded the data and to the youths, parents, and teachers who provided data for the z-proso study.

Funding

The Zurich Project on the Social Development from Childhood to Adulthood received financial support from the Swiss National Science Foundation (fund 10FI14_170409 as to the present study), the Jacobs Foundation, and the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health, the Swiss State Secretariat for Migration, the Department of Education of the Canton of Zurich, the Bank Baer Foundation, and the Visana Foundation. The CSDD was mainly funded by the British Home Office and Department of Health, while the PYS was mainly funded by OJJDP, NIMH and NIDA.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Educational Sciences and Psychology, Universidad de Córdoba, Avda. San Alberto Magno S/N, 14004, Cordoba, Spain

    Izabela Zych

  2. Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    David P. Farrington & Manuel P. Eisner

  3. Jacobs Center for Productive Youth Development, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Denis Ribeaud & Manuel P. Eisner

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  1. Izabela Zych
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  2. David P. Farrington
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  4. Manuel P. Eisner
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Correspondence to Izabela Zych.

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Zych, I., Farrington, D.P., Ribeaud, D. et al. Childhood Explanatory Factors for Adolescent Offending: a Cross-national Comparison Based on Official Records in London, Pittsburgh, and Zurich. J Dev Life Course Criminology 7, 308–330 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40865-021-00167-7

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