Childhood adversity is widely understood to increase a person’s risk of poor mental health during their lifetime, as well as a host of other difficulties. Children exposed to a wide range of adversities are more likely to experience mental ill health – and the more they experience, the longer it goes on for, and the more severe it is, the greater the risk (Khan, 2016). It’s also well established that children with early starting mental health difficulties face a higher risk of multiple later difficulties, including involvement in offending and the justice system (Morrison Gutman et al, 2018).
This new study, by Nicholas Kofi Adjei and colleagues, looks at whether people who experience childhood adversities are more likely to be involved with the police or to carry knives or other weapons at the age of 17. It uses data from a major population survey to ask this question, and it explores to what extent childhood adversity is contributing to young people’s involvement with the criminal justice system in the UK.
The effects of childhood adversity can extend far beyond early life, shaping mental health and behavioural outcomes into adolescence.
Methods
The study draws on data from the Millennium Cohort Study, a large-scale longitudinal study where over 18,000 people who were born between 2000 and 2002 are routinely surveyed to find out about their lives.
It identifies four types of adversity (and combinations of these) that are persistent:
- poverty,
- parental alcohol use,
- parental mental health difficulties, and
- domestic violence and abuse.
It looks at which children have experienced these up to the age of 14, and compares that with rates of police involvement and weapon carrying at 17. It explores a range of ‘trajectories’, including those where poverty is combined with another form of adversity, and those who experience none of these.
Results
The study’s findings point to the importance of the connections between poverty and other forms of adversity as drivers of later difficulties. In the whole sample of 17-year-olds, 20% reported some involvement with the police, while 6% reported that they had carried or used weapons.
Compared with young people who experienced neither persistent poverty nor the other identified forms of prolonged adversity, the study found heightened rates of police involvement and weapon carrying among those who had either or both, but to very different extents.
- The biggest risk was faced by young people who had faced both persistent poverty and parental mental illness during childhood: with rates of 27.8% police involvement and 8.6% weapon-carrying.
- Those experiencing persistent domestic abuse and violenceor those with persistent povertybut none of the other adversities, also had higher than average risks.
- Parental mental ill health and alcohol use (but not persistent poverty) were both associated with a slightly increased risk compared with those who had none of these experiences.
The study goes a step further by exploring to what extent weapon-carrying and police involvement can be attributed to earlier childhood adversities. They conclude that:
about 32% of the cases of weapon involvement and 24% of police contact at age 17 were attributable to persistent poverty and family adversity throughout childhood.
Or to put it differently, if these childhood adversities did not exist, levels of violence and police activity could be reduced by 32% and 24% respectively.
Persistent poverty and family adversity throughout childhood was accountable for 32% of weapon involvement and 24% of police contact at age 17.
Conclusions
The study reinforces a wealth of evidence about the interconnections between childhood and family adversity, poor mental health, and involvement in offending and violence. While the links between these phenomena are more complex than straightforward associations might imply, they present a compelling picture in particular of the long-lasting toxicity and harm of family poverty.
As we know from a lot of other research, poverty is a major risk factor for mental ill health, especially among children (Davie, 2022). It’s also a significant contributor towards behavioural challenges, alongside racism and poor housing (Davie et al, 2023).
This study concludes that structural adversities faced by families living in poverty significantly increase children’s risk of later involvement in offending. This means that tackling disadvantage systemically is essential if children are to have a better life chances in the longer term.
Tackling disadvantage systemically is essential if children are to have better life chances in the longer term.
Strengths and limitations
The study’s use of the Millennium Cohort Study is its biggest strength, and also its main limitation. It’s a big data set that has already produced numerous insights into the trajectories of a particular generation of children, young people and now young adults (e.g. Morrison Gutman et al, 2018). It’s helped us to see how mental health interweaves with other issues in young people’s lives. The insights we’ve gained from it, especially as time has moved on and we can start to see associations during people’s lives, have helped to situate mental health as a product of our life experiences, environments and circumstances.
Being based on a large data set is also the main limitation of this study. It cannot, and does not claim to, look any deeper into the relationships between family poverty, childhood adversity and later outcomes. The ways in which early life experiences affect mental health, and how mental health influences a person’s involvement in violence or offending are complex.
The study also isn’t able to take account of significant risk factors such as systemic racism and discrimination. These are important, given the impacts of racism on mental health, and perhaps more significantly on policing and the ways young people from racialised communities are more often dealt with punitively than their white counterparts (itself a major risk factor for the mental health of young Black people in particular) (Abdinasir and Carty, 2021). This is significant because there is a risk that this study and others like it get (mis)interpreted in a way that furthers the stigma faced by families struggling with parental or child mental ill health, or perpetuates simplistic interpretations of the links between poor mental health and violence.
The large dataset used by this study is its main strength but also its main limitation; such a dataset is not able to explore the nuances of the relationship between childhood adversity and crime later in life.
Implications for practice
The study makes a persuasive case for action to tackle family and child poverty as a priority for government. In the UK, we have seen some recent positive steps with legislation to end the punitive two-child limit for Universal Credit; a measure which by itself could lift many thousands of children above the poverty line. But it also comes at a time of deepening poverty in the UK that requires concerted and sustained action to protect children from its damaging and long-lasting effects on their health.
The message here is clear: persistent poverty harms children’s mental health and it has a heavy long-term cost. Tackling poverty and economic inequality could be an important component of a national effort to turn around rising rates of mental distress (Davie, 2022). But it must come alongside action to tackle racial injustice, gender-based violence, online harmsand the housing crisisamong other toxic contributors to mental ill health.
There are, of course, wider implications too. Supporting parents living with mental ill health or problem substance use effectively, is likely to benefit both them and their children. Yet comparatively little attention is given to the parenting needs of people with mental health difficulties. Building on the achievements of the NHS’s investment in perinatal mental health services in England, this should include extending support to more mothers and birthing people (and their partners) for example through investment in health visiting (backing up government guidance for the Healthy Child Programme with the resources needed to implement it) (HM Government, 2026); building up parent-infant services that have a compelling economic case for their long-term benefits to babies (Blissett et al, 2026); and delivering evidence-based parenting programmes at scale (Davie et al, 2023).
The message here is clear: persistent poverty harms children’s mental health and it has a heavy long-term cost. Tackling poverty and economic inequality could be an important component of a national effort to turn around rising rates of mental distress.
Statement of interests
Andy Bell declares no conflicts of interest.
Editor
Edited by Laura Hemming.
Links
Primary paper
Nicholas Kofi Adjei, Kenisha Russell Jonsson, Jones Opoku-Ware, Sanni Yaya, Yanhua Chen, Davara Bennett, Ruth McGovern, Luke Munford, Michelle Black, David Taylor- Robinson (2025) Impact of family childhood adversity on risk of violence and involvement with police in adolescence: findings from the UK Millennium Cohort Study
Other references
Abdinasir, K and Carty, S (2021) Young Black men’s mental health during Covid-19 – Centre for Mental Health
Blissett, C. et al (2026) Why babies’ first relationships matter – Centre for Mental Health
Davie, E. (2022) Briefing 58: Poverty, economic inequality and mental health – Centre for Mental Health
Davie, E. et al (2023) Growing stronger together – Centre for Mental Health
HM Government (2026) High-impact areas for health visiting (ages 0 to 5) – GOV.UK
Khan (2016) Missed opportunities
Morrison Gutman, L. et al (2018) Children of the millennium – Centre for Mental Health
