Can Moral and Cognitive Agency Help Young People Exposed to Parental Maltreatment Avoid Offending as Adults?

ABSTRACT

Background

Focus on assessing the likelihood of harms, including the risk of committing criminal offences, has tended to be on negative events or characteristics, but promotive factors—positive events/characteristics—and protective factors—developmental features that may facilitate management of the negative—may be just as important. Stages of moral and cognitive agency development are among the latter.

Aims

To determine whether moral and/or cognitive agency helps prevent offending in adulthood among adolescents at risk of becoming offenders after parental maltreatment. The hypothesis was that adolescents at such risk who had stronger moral judgement and cognitive control skills would be less likely to become adult offenders than those with lower moral and cognitive skills.

Methods

Data were from the longitudinal, prospective, USA-based Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study. Data used here were from 2669 participants (1267 males and 1402 females) assessed when 14–19 years old and when 21–26 years old. In the earlier data collection wave, information included one parent’s account of parental maltreatment during the previous year and measures of the adolescent’s moral judgement and cognitive control skills. Data for the second wave included the young person’s reports of any criminal charge between the ages of 18 and 22.

Results

A statistically significant association between parental maltreatment and a later criminal charge was confirmed, even after controlling for fixed variables, including sex and ethnicity. Regression analysis revealed that moral agency moderated the relationship between parental maltreatment and subsequent charges, but cognitive agency did not. Moral agency as an adolescent reduced the likelihood of future adult offending in youth exposed to high parental maltreatment.

Conclusions

Adverse experiences as an adolescent are linked to later offending, but not inevitably so. Recognition that adolescent moral agency is protective may help direct scarce resources into more effective prevention strategies.