The impact of childhood inequalities on serious offending in adolescence: Insights from the Edinburgh Study of Youth Transitions and Crime

There is a burgeoning literature on the topic of childhood inequalities and how this negatively impacts on a range of outcomes over the life-course, including involvement in offending behaviour. However, studies vary widely in terms of the types of childhood inequality they examine and it is not always clear whether some types are more important than others, nor whether there are aspects of inequality that intersect with, or influence, each other. Drawing on findings from the longitudinal Edinburgh Study of Youth Transitions and Crime, this chapter examines the impact of three types of inequality experienced in childhood - poverty (structural inequality), trauma (ACE-based inequality) and formal labelling (systemic inequalities) - on subsequent development of different offending trajectories during adolescence. It finds that, while ACE-based inequalities have the strongest association with all offending pathways, all three types of childhood inequality have a significant influence on subsequent behaviour, demonstrating that serious offending is both symptomatic of deeper-seated needs and driven by labelling and stigma. The chapter concludes that serious efforts to reduce offending during the teenage years require a ‘panoptic policy paradigm’ that addresses different types of early inequality in a concerted and holistic fashion.