The role of emotional resilience, childhood parentification, and attachment style on antisocial behaviour in adulthood: a comparison of an offender and normative population

Purpose: Despite a robust link between poor caregiver attachment and antisociality, few studies have examined the influence of parentification and emotional resilience on delinquency in later life, in groups at differing risk for antisocial conduct. Methodology: This pilot study compared the influence of parentification, attachment style (avoidant or anxious) and emotional resilience on adulthood antisocial behaviour in an offender and normative sample. Of the 137 participants in this study, 66 were supervised by the National Probation Service (age M = 36.90, SD = 13.91), and 71 were recruited from community-dwelling and student populations (age M = 31.83, SD = 13.25). Findings: In partial support of the predictions, participants in the offender group reported significantly greater levels of attachment anxiety compared to the normative group. However, emotional resilience was positively associated with antisociality in the normative sample. Research implications: This small-scale investigation indicates value in exploring these specific variables in a larger, matched samples study, to enable clearer comparisons to be made between offender and normative groups. Practical implications: The preliminary findings suggest that attachment anxiety is associated with antisociality in offender populations, which indicate a therapeutic focus on attachment anxiety as part of correctional care and offender rehabilitation. Originality: This study is novel in its aim to examine the influence of childhood parentification, attachment deficits and emotional resilience on adulthood antisociality in participants from a high-risk offender sample and non-high-risk normative sample

Young people, crime and school exclusion: a case of some surprises

During the 1990s the number of young people being permanently excluded from schools in England and Wales increased dramatically from 2,910 (1990/91) to a peak of 12,700 (1996/97). Coinciding with this rise was a resurgence of the debate centring on lawless and delinquent youth. With the publication of Young People and Crime (Graham and Bowling 1995) and Misspent Youth (Audit Commission 1996) the 'common sense assumption' that exclusion from school inexorably promoted crime received wide support, with the school excludee portrayed as another latter day 'folk devil'. This article explores the link between school exclusion and juvenile crime, and offers some key findings from a research study undertaken with 56 young people who had experience of being excluded from school. Self-report interview questions reveal that whilst 40 of the young people had offended, 90% (36) reported that the onset of their offending commenced prior to their first exclusion. Moreover, 50 (89.2% of the total number of young people in the sample), stated that they were no more likely to offend subsequent to being excluded and 31 (55.4%) stated that they were less likely to offend during their exclusion period. Often, this was because on being excluded, they were 'grounded' by their parents

School dropout, problem behaviour and poor academic achievement : a longitudinal view of portuguese male offenders

This study examines school drop outs from the perspective of male adults themselves through interviews with offenders currently serving sentences. Participants were 10 Portuguese male inmates, between the ages of 19 and 46 years of age, incarcerated in two prison facilities of the Azores. Qualitative and interpretative methods were carried out using a semi-structured in-depth individual interview that was audiorecorded and conducted on the basis of a list of topics. Interview transcripts and thematic analysis were used in data treatment and analysis. The findings primarily indicate that poor academic achievement and emotional and behavioural difficulties of participants played a particular role in early school drop out. The trajectories these individuals followed within the education system presented problem behaviour, learning disabilities, and/or foster care interventions. While school drop out circumstances were apparently various, analysis showed that they were underpinned by three distinct sets of conditions generally not addressed by the education system. The analysis of the triggering factors and the maintenance dynamics of school drop outs indicated three distinct types: retention/absenteeism, life turning points and positive resolution. Implications for secondary prevention and screening practices are discussed.FCT (SFRH/ BD/ 44245/ 2008)CIEC - unidade de investigação 317 da FC

Preschool Children and Behaviour Problems: A Prospective Study

Toddler/child behaviour problems have received relatively little previous attention. Prior studies have implicated a wide variety of factors in the aetiology of child behaviour problems but many of these factors are correlated and little is known about their independent contributions. Four broad categories of factors have been associated with child behaviour problems: (1) maternal social and economic characteristics; (2) maternal lifestyle; (3) maternal mental state/child-rearing practices; and (4) maternal and child physical health. The study took a sample of 5296 families from the Mater-University of Queensland Study of Pregnancy (MUSP) for whom 5-year prospective data are available. The major predictors of toddler behaviour problems were the mother's and child's health, and the mother's mental state. The mother's sociostructural characteristics and lifestyle made little or no additional contribution to the prediction models. It is, however, salutary to note that the majority of children who are classified as having high levels of troublesome behaviour do not fall into any of the risk categories. A variety of explanations and interpretations of the data is considered

School-Based Programs to Reduce Bullying and Victimization

School bullying has serious short-term and long-term effects on children’s physical and mental health. Various anti-bullying programs have been implemented world wide and, more rarely, evaluated. Previous narrative reviews, summarizing the work done on bullying prevention, as well as previous meta-analyses of anti-bullying programs, are limited. The definition of school bullying includes several key elements: physical, verbal, or psychological attack or intimidation that is intended to cause fear, distress, or harm to the victim; an imbalance of power (psychological or physical), with a more powerful child (or children) oppressing less powerful ones; and repeated incidents between the same children over a prolonged period. School bullying can occur in school or on the way to or from school. It is not bullying when two persons of the same strength (physical, psychological, or verbal) victimize each other. This report presents a systematic review and meta-analysis of the effectiveness of programs designed to reduce school bullying perpetration and victimization (i.e. being bullied). The authors indicate the pitfalls of previous reviews and explain in detail how the present systematic review and meta-analysis addresses the gaps in the existing literature on bullying prevention

Predicting substance use behavior among South African adolescents: The role of leisure experiences across time

Using seven waves of data, collected twice a year from the 8th through the 11th grades in a low-resource community in Cape Town, South Africa, we aimed to describe the developmental trends in three specific leisure experiences (leisure boredom, new leisure interests, and healthy leisure) and substance use (cigarettes, alcohol, and marijuana) behaviors and to investigate the ways in which changes in leisure experiences predict changes in substance use behaviors over time. Results indicated that adolescents’ substance use increased significantly across adolescence, but that leisure experiences remained fairly stable over time. We also found that adolescent leisure experiences predicted baseline substance use and that changes in leisure experiences predicted changes in substance use behaviors over time, with leisure boredom emerging as the most consistent and strongest predictor of alcohol, cigarette, and marijuana use. Implications for interventions that target time use and leisure experiences are discussed.Web of Scienc

Delinquency and reputational orientations of adolescent at-risk and not-at-risk males and females

This research investigated differences in delinquent activities and the reputational orientations of at-risk and not-at-risk male and female adolescents. Initially, we sought to establish that adolescent males and females differed in these respects. This was found to be the case: males (n = 722) scored significantly higher than females (n = 738) on seven self-reported delinquency variables and on eight reputation enhancement variables pertaining to social deviance, non-conforming reputation, and power/evaluation private identity. When a sample of 31 at-risk females was subsequently pair-wise age matched with 31 not-at-risk females, at-risk females scored significantly higher on all delinquency variables other than school misdemeanors. These at-risk females also scored significantly higher on four reputation enhancement variables relating to social deviance and non-conformity. Given that at-risk females did not differ from their not-at-risk counterparts in level of involvement in school misdemeanors, we sought to determine whether this was also the case for at-risk and not-at-risk males. An age-matched sample of 91 pairs revealed that at-risk males reported significantly higher involvement than not-at-risk males in all aspects of delinquency, including school misdemeanors. They also sought a more non-conforming reputation. To explore the relationships between delinquency and reputation enhancement, a canonical correlation analysis was performed. All findings are discussed in the light of reputation enhancement theory. © 2008 Taylor & Franci

Search for direct production of charginos and neutralinos in events with three leptons and missing transverse momentum in √s = 7 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for the direct production of charginos and neutralinos in final states with three electrons or muons and missing transverse momentum is presented. The analysis is based on 4.7 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data delivered by the Large Hadron Collider and recorded with the ATLAS detector. Observations are consistent with Standard Model expectations in three signal regions that are either depleted or enriched in Z-boson decays. Upper limits at 95% confidence level are set in R-parity conserving phenomenological minimal supersymmetric models and in simplified models, significantly extending previous results