The impact of childhood adversity on violent crime in adolescence and early adulthood

尽管英国的总体犯罪率在过去二十年中有所下降，但过去四年中严重暴力事件的水平表明这一趋势正在逆转。因此，解决严重暴力问题已成为英国政府的优先事项。防止青少年参与暴力的主要方法之一是查明并限制其早期原因。众所周知，在童年时期有过创伤或压力经历的人（被称为不良的童年经历或童年逆境）-例如儿童虐待的受害者或父母患有精神疾病-更有可能在青春期和成年早期从事暴力活动。然而，目前尚不清楚哪些不良经历对暴力的影响最大，也不清楚在不同年龄经历的不良经历对暴力的影响是大还是小。我们项目的目的就是要回答这些问题。我们将解决几个关于童年逆境与青春期和成年早期严重暴力之间关系的研究问题。我们将考虑范围广泛的逆境，包括（但不限于）虐待（情感，身体和性），欺凌，丧亲之痛，父母滥用药物，精神疾病和犯罪。在我们的分析中，逆境的选择将部分由我们指导小组的弱势儿童和青年大使提供信息（这些年轻人在童年时期经历过逆境，并被地方当局聘为大使）。我们将确定这些逆境是否对青少年或青年参与暴力犯罪的风险有特别大的影响。另一个目标是确定儿童时期是否存在暴露于逆境的关键时期——无论是一般的逆境还是一个或多个特定的逆境——会使儿童处于特别高的风险中。我们还计划调查学业成就和出勤率、心理健康和冒险行为（如吸毒）在童年逆境和暴力之间的关系中所起的作用。为了实现我们项目的目标，我们将使用雅芳父母和儿童纵向研究（ALSPAC）的数据，这是一个世界领先的数据资源，记录了自20世纪90年代初以来居住在布里斯托尔地区的大约14,500个家庭的健康、发展和家庭情况的极其详细的信息。数据收集始于怀孕期间，此后每年都在继续。这种数据资源的丰富性使我们能够回答以前的研究无法解决的问题。我们将把ALSPAC与雅芳和萨默塞特警方提供的数据联系起来，生成英国有史以来最丰富的关于暴力和儿童逆境的数据集，进一步增强这一独特的资源，使其他研究人员能够以新的方式调查犯罪的原因和后果。我们的研究结果将阐明我们如何以及何时最好地干预有暴力风险的儿童（或家庭）。解决这些关键问题有可能有助于降低暴力犯罪率，并更好地了解童年经历如何导致暴力，这将使肇事者及其家庭、受害者、从业人员、决策者和公众受益。

Even though rates of overall crime have gone down in the UK over the last two decades, levels of serious violence in the past four years indicate a reversal of this trend. As a result, tackling serious violence has become a UK Government priority. One of the main ways to prevent youth involvement in violence is to identify and limit its early causes.It is well-known that individuals who have had traumatic or stressful experiences during childhood (referred to as adverse childhood experiences or childhood adversity) - such as being a victim of child abuse or having a parent who suffers from a mental illness - are more likely to engage in violence during adolescence and early adulthood. However, it is not clear which adverse experiences contribute most to violence nor whether they have a greater or lesser impact if experienced at different ages. The aim of our project is to answer these questions.We will address several research questions about the relationship between childhood adversity and serious violence during adolescence and early adulthood. We will consider a wide range of adversities including (but not restricted to) abuse (emotional, physical, and sexual), bullying, bereavement, and parental substance abuse, mental illness, and criminality. The choice of adversities to include in our analyses will be informed in part by the Ambassadors for Vulnerable Children and Young People on our steering group (these are young people who have experience of adversity in childhood, and who are employed by local authorities as ambassadors). We will identify whether any of these adversities have a particularly large impact on the risk of being involved in violent crime as a teenager or a young adult. Another goal is to determine whether there are critical periods during childhood where exposure to adversity - either in general or to one or more specific adversities - puts a child at particularly high risk. We also plan to investigate what role school attainment and attendance, mental health, and risk-taking behaviours (such as taking drugs) play in the relationship between childhood adversity and violence.To fulfil the goals of our project, we will use data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), a world-leading data resource that has recorded extremely detailed information on the health, development and family circumstances of approximately 14,500 families living in the Bristol area since the early 1990s. Data collection started during pregnancy and has continued year on year ever since. The richness of this data resource makes it possible to answer questions that previous studies have been unable to address. We will link ALSPAC to data provided by Avon and Somerset police to generate the richest data set on violence and childhood adversity ever created in the UK, further enhancing this unique resource and enabling other researchers to investigate the causes and consequences of offending in new ways.Our findings will shed light on how and when we can best intervene with children (or families) at risk of violence. Addressing these key questions has the potential to help reduce rates of violent crime and to provide a better understanding of how childhood experience contributes to violence that will benefit perpetrators and their families, victims, practitioners, policy makers and the general public.