Marie Torstensson Levander

Schizophrenia, neighbourhood, and crime

Objective:  To investigate the relationship between the prevalence of schizophrenia and measures of social deprivation in varying areas in the city of Malmö.

Sex differences in offending trajectories in a Swedish cohort

BACKGROUND Despite the increased interest in female offending trajectories over the last decades, knowledge is still limited. AIM To meet the need for more knowledge on female offending trajectories by studying sex differences in criminal career patterns. METHOD Data on 518 female and 2567 male offenders up to age 30 from the Swedish longitudinal Project Metropolitan study were analysed using latent class analysis. RESULTS The female offenders were much less predisposed to offend than the males, but when they did, they tended to follow a similar set of trajectories to males in their criminal development over time. Four criminal career patterns were identified for each sex. Two patterns were the same between the sexes, and two were gender unique. All career patterns had meaningful and distinct associations with crime characteristics. CONCLUSIONS Our study presents indicators relating both to gender differences and to heterogeneity within the group of female offenders. One important finding was the identification of an adult-onset offender group unique to females. This group was characterised by high criminal activity over the years following their late onset. Further research will focus on the childhood origins, pathways and outcomes of different female antisocial and criminal careers.

Pathways to child and adolescent psychiatric clinics: a multilevel study of the significance of ethnicity and neighbourhood social characteristics on source of referral

BackgroundIn the Swedish society, as in many other societies, many children and adolescents with mental health problems do not receive the help they need. As the Swedish society becomes increasingly multicultural, and as ethnic and economic residential segregation become more pronounced, this study utilises ethnicity and neighbourhood context to examine referral pathways to child and adolescent psychiatric (CAP) clinics.MethodsThe analysis examines four different sources of referrals: family referrals, social/legal agency referrals, school referrals and health/mental health referrals. The referrals of 2054 children aged 11-19 from the Stockholm Child-Psychiatric Database were studied using multilevel logistic regression analyses.ResultsResults indicate that ethnicity played an important role in how children and adolescents were referred to CAP-clinics. Family referrals were more common among children and adolescents with a Swedish background than among those with an immigrant background. Referrals by social/legal agencies were more common among children and adolescents with African and Asian backgrounds. Children with Asian or South American backgrounds were more likely to have been referred by schools or by the health/mental health care sector. A significant neighbourhood effect was found in relation to family referrals. Children and adolescents from neighbourhoods with low levels of socioeconomic deprivation were more likely to be referred to CAP-clinics by their families in comparison to children from other neighbourhoods. Such differences were not found in relation in relation to the other sources of referral.ConclusionsThis article reports findings that can be an important first step toward increasing knowledge on reasons behind differential referral rates and uptake of psychiatric care in an ethnically diverse Swedish sample. These findings have implications for the design and evaluation of community mental health outreach programs and should be considered when developing measures and strategies intended to reach and help children with mental health problems. This might involve providing information about the availability and accessibility of health care for children and adolescents with mental health problems to families in certain neighbourhoods and with different ethnic backgrounds.

Adolescents' Utilisation of Psychiatric Care, Neighbourhoods and Neighbourhood Socioeconomic Deprivation : A Multilevel Analysis

Mental health problems among adolescents have become a major public health issue, and it is therefore important to increase knowledge on the contextual determinants of adolescent mental health. One such determinant is the socioeconomic structure of the neighbourhood. The present study has two central objectives, (i) to examine if neighbourhood socioeconomic deprivation is associated to individual variations in utilisation of psychiatric care in a Swedish context, and (ii) to investigate if neighbourhood boundaries are a valid construct for identifying contexts that influence individual variations in psychiatric care utilization. Data were obtained from the Longitudinal Multilevel Analysis in Scania (LOMAS) database. The study population consists of all boys and girls aged 13–18 years (N=18,417), who were living in the city of Malmö, Sweden, in 2005. Multilevel logistic regression analysis was applied to estimate the probability of psychiatric care utilisation. The results from the study indicate that the neighbourhood of residence had little influence on psychiatric care utilisation. Although we initially found a variation between neighbourhoods, this general contextual effect was very small (i.e. 1.6 %). The initial conclusive association between the neighbourhood level of disadvantage and psychiatric care utilisation (specific contextual effect) disappeared following adjustment for individual and family level variables. Our results suggest the neighbourhoods in Malmö (at least measured in terms of SAMS-areas), do not provide accurate information for discriminating adolescents utilisation of psychiatric care. The SAMS-areas appears to be an inappropriate construct of the social environment that influences adolescent utilisation of psychiatric care. Therefore, public health interventions should be directed to the whole city rather than to specific neighbourhoods. However, since geographical, social or cultural contexts may be important for our understanding of adolescent mental health further research is needed to identify such contexts.

A Life-Course Perspective on Girls’ Criminality

This chapter explores the female patterning of crime and factors that differentiate between these patterns. The theoretical frame considers the developmental course of criminality and some common developmental pathways or trajectories. This perspective is concerned with identifying factors across people’s lives that account for both stability and change in antisocial behavior and crime. The family, school, and peer groups, expressed in social bonds and social networks, are the dominant sources of social control during childhood and adolescence and although childhood oppositional behavior tends to attenuate these important sources of social control, this is not invariably the case. The chapter has a special focus on a female pattern of crime that has not previously been given so much attention in research, namely an adulthood-onset trajectory. The overall aim is to contribute to a better understanding of factors that contribute to the development of different criminal careers among females by studying individual and social characteristics and how such factors interact to change and shape criminal involvement over two critical developmental phases: early adolescence and the transition into young adulthood for a cohort of Swedish girls.

Neighbourhood disorder and worry about criminal victimization in the neighbourhood

This study tested a cross-level integrated model of neighbourhood level disorder and individual level vulnerability, in relation to explaining individual differences in worry about criminal victimization1. The aim of the present study is (1) to establish if there is unique neighbourhood level variation in worry about criminal victimization, independent of neighbourhood composition, and(2) to establish the extent to which two proposed mechanisms at the individual level, prior local victimization and perceived disorder, act as mediators of a hypothesised effect of neighbourhood level disorder. Given the hierarchical structure of the research question a series of multilevel analyses based on data from a survey of more than 4,000 residents of a Swedish urban are a was performed. Findings by and large indicate that there are significant neighbourhood level differences in worry about criminal victimization and that these differences are not completely due to compositional effects. Neighbourhood disorder has effects on worry about criminal victimization, independent of the composition of neighbourhoods. The present study suggests that neighbourhood disorder has consequences for worry about criminal victimization and that prior victimization and perceived disorder are key mediators of the contextual effect of neighbourhood disorder. The implications of these findings are discussed.

An examination of the interaction between morality and self-control in offending: A study of differences between girls and boys: Gender differences in morality and self-control

BACKGROUND There is a well-documented gender difference in offending, with evidence that boys, on average, are more involved in crime than girls. Opinions differ, however, on whether the causes of crime apply to girls and boys similarly. AIMS Our aim is to explore crime propensity in boys and girls. Our research questions were (1) are there differences between boys and girls in moral values and self-control; (2) are these attributes similarly correlated with offending among girls and boys; and (3) is any interaction effect between morality and self-control identical for girls and boys. METHODS Data were drawn from the Malmö Individual and Neighbourhood Development Study, which includes 481 girls and boys aged 16-17. An 8-item self-control scale was derived from Grasmicks self-control instrument; we created a 16-item morality scale. Analysis of variance was used to test for differences in scale scores. RESULTS There were significant gender differences in moral values but not self-control. Moral values and self-control were significantly correlated with offending among both girls and boys. In the multiple regression analysis, the three-way interaction term used to test the interaction between gender, self-control and moral values was non-significant, indicating that the magnitude of the self-control-moral value interaction is not affected by gender. CONCLUSIONS Our findings indicate that effects of morality and self-control are general and apply to girls and boys similarly, so more research is needed to explain gender differences in crime prevalence.

Assessing and managing risk for intimate partner violence : Police employees’ use of the Police Screening Tool for Violent Crimes in Scania

Abstract Relapse into intimate partner violence (IPV) can potentially be predicted and counter-measures applied. This study examines the predictive validity of a violence risk assessment tool: the Police Screening Tool for Violent Crimes (PST-VC) among a sample of 65 offenders. All PST-VC assessments regarding IPV that were conducted at the Scania police department in 2010 were included in the sample. Follow-up time was 16–28 months, and all reported incidents with the same victim and suspected offender were recorded. The PST-VC demonstrated limited effect in the ability to identify high-risk offenders and predict repeat victimization. Interventions against the offender and victim protective actions were more often recommended in high-risk cases but did not lower the number of IPV relapses. The study suggests that the PST-VC is not a promising instrument.