This project uses the framework of the NSW Child Development Study to examine the prevalence and correlates of behavioural problems among children born to parents with and without criminal offending histories. This project will identify potential mechanisms through which parental offending history might be associated with behavioural problems in their children at age 5 and 11 years, with particular consideration of gender-specific patterns of intergenerational risk transmission. This project is intended to inform policy makers and the development of new intervention programmes focused on preventing future offending and contact with the criminal justice system by young people.

This project leverages population data from the NSW Child Development Study, a longitudinal study of a state-wide population of children (N=~87,000) and their parents, for whom successive waves of record linkage from multiple government departments are combined with information from teacher- and child-reported cross-sectional surveys completed at ages 5 and 11 years respectively. Within this project we undertake an additional linkage of records from NSW Police and Juvenile Justice, for the first time within the NSW-CDS, in order to examine both victimization exposure, and offence history for the children up to age 13 – 14 years.

This project has received funding from the Australian Institute of Criminology (Criminology Research Grant CRG191415; 2015 – 17).