Investigating heterogeneity in violent offending liability among injection drug users from a developmental perspective

INTRODUCTION:

Violence is a major burden of harm among injecting drug users (IDU), however, the liability to violent offending is not well understood. The current study aimed to better understand differences in the liability to violence by determining whether IDU could be disaggregated into distinct violent offending classes, and determining the correlates of class membership.

METHODS:

A total of 300 IDU from Sydney, Australia were administered a structured interview examining the prevalence and severity of drug use and violent offending histories, as well as early life risk factors (maltreatment, childhood mental disorder, trait personality).

RESULTS:

IDU were disaggregated into four distinct latent classes, comprising a non-violent class (24%), an adolescent-onset persistent class (33%), an adult-onset transient class (24%) and an early-onset, chronic class (19%). Pairwise and group comparisons of classes on predispositional and substance use risks showed that the EARLY class had the poorest psychosocial risk profile, while the NON class had the most favourable. Multinomial logistic regression revealed that higher trait impulsivity and aggression scores, having a history of conduct disorder, frequent childhood abuse, and more problematic alcohol use, were independently associated with more temporally stable and severe violent offending. The model explained 67% of variance in class membership (χ²=207.7, df=51, p<0.001).

CONCLUSIONS:

IDU can be meaningfully disaggregated into distinct violent offending classes using developmental criteria. The age of onset of violence was indicative of class membership insomuch as that the extent of early life risk exposure was differentially associated with greater long-term liability to violence and drug use.

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By:  Torok M¹, Darke S², Shand F³, Kaye S².

¹National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. Electronic address: m.torok@unsw.edu.au.

²National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.

³Black Dog Institute, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.

Addict Behav. 2016 Apr 22;60:165-170. doi: 10.1016/j.addbeh.2016.04.013. [Epub ahead of print] 

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Early Parenting Styles & Sexual Offending Behavior: A Comparative Study

Sexual offenders, in general, report problematic rearing practices from their parents, lacking however more empirical research on this topic regarding particular subtypes of offenders. 

The current study examined the relationship between early parenting styles and different types of sexual offending. A total of 113 sexual offenders (rapists, pedophilic and nonpedophilic child molesters), and 51 nonsexual offenders completed the EMBU (My Memories of Upbringing), the Brief Symptom Inventory, and the Socially Desirable Response Set Measure. 

Results showed that rapists were less likely to remember their fathers as being emotionally warm compared with nonsexual offenders and pedophilic child molesters. In addition, compared with rapists, pedophilic offenders perceived their mothers as having been less emotionally warm to them. 

Overall, results showed that certain developmental experiences with parents were able to distinguish between subtypes of offenders supporting an association between distal interpersonal factors and sexual offending.

These findings may have important implications for early intervention and prevention of sexual crimes. Further research using larger samples of pedophilic child molesters is recommended.

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By:  Sigre-Leirós V1, Carvalho J2, Nobre PJ3.

• 1Faculdade de Psicologia e de Ciências da Educação da Universidade do Porto, Rua Alfredo Allen, 4200-135 Porto, Portugal. Electronic address: vera.sigre.leiros@gmail.com.
• 2Faculdade de Psicologia e de Ciências da Educação da Universidade do Porto, Rua Alfredo Allen, 4200-135 Porto, Portugal; Universidade Lusófona de Humanidades e Tecnologias, Lisboa, Portugal.
• 3Faculdade de Psicologia e de Ciências da Educação da Universidade do Porto, Rua Alfredo Allen, 4200-135 Porto, Portugal. 
• Int J Law Psychiatry. 2016 Mar 24. pii: S0160-2527(16)30055-3. doi: 10.1016/j.ijlp.2016.02.042.

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Genetic Background of Extreme Violent Behavior

In developed countries, the majority of all violent crime is committed by a small group of antisocial recidivistic offenders, but no genes have been shown to contribute to recidivistic violent offending or severe violent behavior, such as homicide. 

Our results, from two independent cohorts of Finnish prisoners, revealed that a monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) low-activity genotype (contributing to low dopamine turnover rate) as well as the CDH13 gene (coding for neuronal membrane adhesion protein) are associated with extremely violent behavior (at least 10 committed homicides, attempted homicides or batteries). No substantial signal was observed for either MAOA or CDH13 among non-violent offenders, indicating that findings were specific for violent offending, and not largely attributable to substance abuse or antisocial personality disorder. 

These results indicate both low monoamine metabolism and neuronal membrane dysfunction as plausible factors in the etiology of extreme criminal violent behavior, and imply that at least about 5–10% of all severe violent crime in Finland is attributable to the aforementioned MAOA and CDH13 genotypes.

Below:  Age- and gender-adjusted odds ratios for low-activity MAOA genotype and CDH13 (rs11649622) as a function of the number of committed violent crimes. The number of individuals, allele frequencies and odds ratios are shown below. The number of control subjects was 1946 for MAOA and 1877 for CDH13 analysis.

Below:  Manhattan plot of extremely violent offenders GWAS. The highest cluster is seen in locus 16q23.3

Full article at:   http://goo.gl/Bbrucl

By:  J Tiihonen,^1,2,3,19 M-R Rautiainen,^3,19 HM Ollila,^3,4 E Repo-Tiihonen,² M Virkkunen,^5,6 A Palotie,^7,8,9,10,11 O Pietiläinen,³ K Kristiansson,³ M Joukamaa,¹² H Lauerma,^3,13,14 J Saarela,¹⁵ S Tyni,¹⁶ H Vartiainen,¹⁶ J Paananen,¹⁷D Goldman,¹⁸ and T Paunio^3,5,6

¹Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden

²Department of Forensic Psychiatry, University of Eastern Finland, Niuvanniemi Hospital, Kuopio, Finland

³National Institute for Health and Welfare, Helsinki, Finland

⁴Stanford University Center for Sleep Sciences, Palo Alto, CA, USA

⁵Department of Psychiatry, University of Helsinki, Institute of Clinical Medicine, Helsinki, Finland

⁶Department of Psychiatry, Helsinki University Central Hospital, Helsinki, Finland

⁷Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Hinxton, Cambridgeshire, England

⁸Analytic and Translational Genetics Unit, Department of Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA

⁹Program in Medical and Population Genetics, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA, USA

¹⁰Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

¹¹Psychiatric & Neurodevelopmental Genetics Unit, Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA

¹²Social Psychiatry Unit, School of Health Sciences, University of Tampere, Finland

¹³Psychiatric Hospital for Prisoners, Turku, Finland

¹⁴University of Turku, Turku, Finland

¹⁵Finnish Genome Center, Helsinki, Finland

¹⁶The Criminal Sanctions Agency, Helsinki, Finland

¹⁷University of Eastern Finland, Bioinformatics Center, Kuopio, Finland

¹⁸Laboratory of Neurogenetics, National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, Rockville, MD, USA

Correspondence: Professor J Tiihonen, Karolinska Institutet, Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Byggnad R5, Stockholm, S-171 76, Sweden or Professor T Paunio, National Institute for Health and Welfare, PO Box 30, FI-00271, Finland. Email: es.ik@nenohiit.iraj or ; Email:if.lht@oinuap.aniit

¹⁹These authors contributed equaliy to this work.

Mol Psychiatry. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2016 Mar 3. Mol Psychiatry. 2015 Jun; 20(6): 786–792.

  

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Race, Ethnicity, and Adolescent Violent Victimization

The risk of adolescent violent victimization in the United States varies considerably across racial and ethnic populations; it is unknown whether the sources of risk also vary by race and ethnicity. 

This study examined the correlates of violent victimization for White, Black, and Hispanic youth. Data collected from 11,070 adolescents (51 % female, mean age = 15.04 years) during the first two waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health were used to estimate group-specific multilevel logistic regression models. 

The results indicate that male, violent offending, peer deviance, gang membership, and low self-control were significantly associated with increased odds of violent victimization for all groups. Some activities-including getting drunk, sneaking out, and unstructured socializing with peers-were risk factors for Black adolescents only; skipping school was a risk factor only for Hispanic adolescents. 

Although there are many similarities across groups, the findings suggest that minority adolescents are particularly vulnerable to violent victimization when they engage in some activities and minor forms of delinquency.

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By:  Tillyer MS1, Tillyer R2.

• 1Department of Criminal Justice, University of Texas at San Antonio (http://copp.utsa.edu/department/category/criminal-justice/), 501 W. Cesar E. Chavez Blvd., San Antonio, TX, 78207, USA. Marie.Tillyer@utsa.edu.
• 2Department of Criminal Justice, University of Texas at San Antonio, 501 W. Cesar E. Chavez Blvd., San Antonio, TX, 78207, USA. Rob.Tillyer@utsa.edu. 
• J Youth Adolesc. 2016 Jan 14.

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Violent Offending Promotes Appetitive Aggression Rather than Posttraumatic Stress—A Replication Study with Burundian Ex-Combatants

Research has identified appetitive aggression, i.e., the perception of committed, violent acts as appealing, exciting and fascinating, as a common phenomenon within populations living in precarious and violent circumstances. Investigating demobilized soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) demonstrated that violent offending is associated with appetitive aggression and not necessarily with symptoms of posttraumatic stress. 

In the present study, we sought to replicate these results in an independent and larger sample of demobilized soldiers from Burundi. As with the Congolese ex-combatants, random forest regression revealed that the number of lifetime perpetrated violent acts is the most important predictor of appetitive aggression and the number of lifetime experienced traumatic events is the main predictor for posttraumatic stress. 

Perpetrated violent acts with salient cues of hunting (pursuing the victim, the sight of blood, etc.) were most predictive for perceiving violent cues appealingly after demobilization. Moreover, the association of violent acts and appetitive aggression as well as traumatic events and posttraumatic stress remains strong even years after demobilization. Patterns of traumatic events and perpetrated acts as predictors for posttraumatic stress and appetitive aggression seem to be robust among different samples of ex-combatants who fought in civil wars. 

Psychotherapeutic interventions that address these complementary facets of combat-related disorders—namely, posttraumatic stress and appetitive aggression—are indispensable for a successful reintegration of those who fought in armed conflicts and to achieve a successful transition to peace.

Below:  Lifetime exposure to violence (%) and cvis for the AAS and PSS-I sum scores resulting from ex-combatants in Burundi vs. DRC. The figure shows similar patterns of prevalence rates as well as the predictor's importances in predicting AAS and PSS-I for Burundian and Congolese ex-combatants. The cvis reveal violent acts with salient cues of hunting (e.g., participating in a massacre) to be most predictive for the AAS score. The prediction of PSS-I by participation in a massacre and stolen food to survive was not replicated. specTE-exp, specific traumatic events–experienced; specTE-wit, specific traumatic events–witnessed; specPA, specific perpetrated acts; n.a. (red), not assessed in Burundi; n.a. (black), not assessed in DRC.

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By:   Anke Köbach,^1,2,* Corina Nandi,¹ Anselm Crombach,^1,2,3 Manassé Bambonyé,³ Britta Westner,¹ and Thomas Elbert^1,2,3

¹Clinical and Neuropsychology Group, Department of Psychology, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany

²Vivo International, Konstanz, Germany

³Department of Clinical Psychology, Université Lumière de Bujumbura, Bujumbura, Burundi

Edited by: Chris J. Gibbons, The University of Manchester, UK

Reviewed by: Richard S. John, University of Southern California, USA; Mingna Liu, Northwestern University, USA

*Correspondence: Anke Köbach ; Email: ed.znatsnok-inu@hcabeok.ekna

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The Relationship Between Maltreatment Victimisation & Sexual & Violent Offending: Differences Between Adolescent Offenders With & Without Intellectual Disability

Juveniles with intellectual disabilities (ID) are more often victims of maltreatment and more often perpetrators of abuse than juveniles without ID. Because previous research on the relationship between maltreatment victimisation and subsequent offending behaviour was primarily performed in non-disabled samples, the present study aimed to examine differences between juvenile offenders with and without ID in the relationship between maltreatment victimisation and sexual and violent offending.

The sample consisted of juvenile offenders with ID (n = 102) and without ID (n = 526) who appeared before the courts for a criminal act and for whom the Washington State Juvenile Court Assessment (WSJCA) was completed. Pearson correlation coefficients were calculated to determine the strength of the relationship between maltreatment and offending, Fisher's z tests were calculated to assess the significance of the differences between the two groups in the strength of the correlations, and multiple logistic regression analyses were performed to examine the unique contribution of maltreatment victimisation to the prediction of violent and sexual offending.

Seventy per cent of the juvenile offenders with ID and 42% of the juvenile offenders without ID had experienced abuse and/or neglect. Both sexual and violent offending were more common in juvenile offenders with ID than in juvenile offenders without ID. Moreover, the relationship between different forms of maltreatment and sexual offending was stronger in juvenile offenders with ID than in juvenile offenders without ID.

Given the high rates of abuse and neglect victimisation and the strength of the association between victimisation and sexual offending, especially in juvenile offenders with ID, treatment should focus on potential trauma and other problems associated with the abuse.

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By: van der Put CE1, Asscher JJ, Wissink IB, Stams GJ.

• 1Forensic Child and Youth Care Sciences, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands. 

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