Policy Hub
On 20th December 2005, the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) published early findings of two major research programmes on how and why young people become criminals, and what we can do to change their lives.
Pathways into and out of Crime: Risk, Resilience and Diversity, is a network of six universities exploring aspects of young people's lives linked to crime and anti-social behaviour. Due to conclude in April 2006, it has already involved two years of intense work with more than 1,000 10-18-year-olds.
A separate programme, the SCoPiC Network (Social Contexts of Pathways into Crime) is a major five-year investigation into what kind of people in which sort of circumstances turn to crime. Researchers are following a sample of 707 boys and girls who were 12 years old in March, 2003, right through until they reach the peak age for criminal activity, 14-15, in 2007. The aim is to examine how far crime can be explained, on the one hand by adolescents' morality and ability to exercise self-control, and on the other by the social and moral environments in which they develop and operate.
The findings call into question some commonly held views about why young people become involved in crime and show that situations often thought of as leading to problem behaviour can actually be the opposite. For instance, a parent being in prison may provide a respite from what may have been a chaotic home life. Similarly, they question the inevitability of the link between drug use and crime, showing the complexity of this relationship and how offending can stop even though some kinds of drug use may continue.
A press summary can be viewed on the Society Today website.