Neurogenetics and differential susceptibility to criminogenic social environments: How do young people develop and express crime propensities?

Human action is all about interaction between people and their environments. One kind of action of seminal interest to policy-makers is criminal behaviour. In recent years, an exciting new direction in the study of crime has been the role of genetics, and particularly gene-environment interactions, in crime causation. However, most genetic studies lack compelling measures of social environments and, especially, people's exposure to social environments, and rarely assess the role of change and stability in exposure over time. No study as far as we are aware has linked both genetic and neurocognitive data to detailed longitudinal data on people's exposure to social environments. The proposed research addresses this shortcoming by designing an original genetic study, using the latest methods for DNA analysis, with links to the Peterborough Adolescent and Young Adult Development Study (PADS+), an ongoing longitudinal study which has used innovative methods to study personal characteristics and exposure to social environments and already collected more than 10 years of detailed data spanning the period from pre-adolescence into young adulthood from a contemporary UK age cohort.

One main objective of this research is to bring together the most advanced methods from human genetic and social environmental research to study gene-environment interactions in the development of people's crime propensities and their involvement in acts of crime, bridging the gap between two very divergent perspectives on the causes of crime. In doing so, the study aspires to advance knowledge about which genetic and environmental factors are especially important for people's crime involvement, why they are important and, consequently, what policies and practices may be most efficacious in preventing people from developing crime propensities and committing acts of crime.

The first of these methods is the sequencing of genetic data to identify whether certain individuals carry genes of interest to criminologists, such as those associated with social, moral and emotional cognition, violent and impulsive behaviour, mental illness, and substance use and addiction. DNA sequencing technology is advancing rapidly and allowing for increasingly ambitious and affordable genotypic research, and the proposed study aims to capitalize on cutting-edge methods.

The second method is the innovative combination of a small-area community survey and census data with a detailed space-time diary which PADS+ has used to collect data not only on participants' family and neighbourhood environments but all the places where they spend their time, including detailed data about what happens in those settings. Using this data, the study has already published ground-breaking research showing how key personal characteristics interact with exposure to different environments in determining people's crime involvement (e.g., Wikström et al. 2012).

Using these two methods, the proposed study will be able explore the relationship between participants' genes and their development of specific neurocognitive abilities and crime propensities, against the backdrop of their exposure to different social environments and in relation to their self-reported and official crime involvement, as well as other relevant outcomes.

Key areas of impact include the advancement of knowledge about what features of social environments are particularly important for people's crime involvement, who may be vulnerable to those environments, and why. This can improve our understanding of how to best identify and support those who may be especially vulnerable.

Crime remains one of the most persistent, destructive and costly social problems societies face. The UK Peace Index 2013 estimates that crimes against households and individuals cost the UK £124 billion in 2012. This includes heavy expenditures by the criminal justice system and related social agencies, as well as material, physical and psychological costs to the victims of crime, but does not factor in many of the costs to those involved in crime, such as bleak life prospects and the spiralling impact on families, friends, neighbourhoods, and social institutions outside the criminal justice system.

Criminal justice professionals are increasingly aware of the need to acquire more evidence-based knowledge about what causes crime as they struggle to identify effective ways to reduce it. Yet most studies report only weak results because they still focus either on the people who commit crime or the places crimes happen and overlook their interaction. As a consequence, the interventions they inform tend to assume a one-size-fits-all approach overestimating the causal potency of specific personal or environmental factors.

Contributing to change in how the public, practitioners and academics approach the explanation and prevention of crime is a core aim of the proposed study, in conjunction with PADS+. It aims to do so by using more rigorous methods to better assess the explanation of crime as an interaction between people's biology and their environments, and its relevance for policy and practice.

At a general level, increasing recognition that crime is the outcome of an interaction between people and places opens up the possibilities for intervention from one to three directions - targeting the person, the place, or the intersection between people and places. The more we know about how people and places interact, the better we will understand which factors are important in most cases, and be able assess which are most important in specific cases, allowing us to identify the most promising focus for both general and targeted interventions. Limited resources can then be allocated more efficiently, efficaciously, economically and ethically.

These advances in knowledge will benefit those who design and implement policies and public services which target individuals (e.g., medical and psychiatric professionals), places (e.g., social and environmental professionals) and systemic factors (e.g., crime prevention partnerships). They may also benefit legal professionals in better assessing criminal responsibility.

The proposed study has the specific potential to benefit public services and policies which improve people's health and quality of life by supporting their cognitive development. By situating our understanding of genetic influences on people's crime involvement against the foreground of their developmental and situational experiences, the proposed research has the potential to improve knowledge about the relative importance of genetic influences and hence the practicality of genetically-informed interventions, such as psychopharmacological approaches, of relevance to those working in medical and psychiatric industries. It also has the potential to improve our understanding of the roots of cognitive differences, including key developmental windows and sources of influence. This can help us better understand how to support general cognitive health, as well as identified deficits, with implications for child care, health care, education and social services. A better understanding of how the brain interprets and evaluates experiences can also help us better identify important environmental factors and how to best manipulate them, with implications for environmental design, situational crime prevention, and media enterprises (e.g., information campaigns).