Adolescent Violence Towards Parents: A Case of Specialisation?
| Author | Helen Mildred,Richelle Mayshak,Peter Miller,Andrew Day,Lauren Grace Moulds |
| DOI | 10.1177/1473225419880004 |
| Published date | 01 December 2019 |
| Date | 01 December 2019 |
880004YJJ0010.1177/1473225419880004Youth JusticeMoulds et al.
research-article2019
Original Article
Youth Justice
2019, Vol. 19(3) 206 –221
Adolescent Violence Towards
© The Author(s) 2019
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Parents: A Case of Specialisation?
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https://doi.org/10.1177/1473225419880004
DOI: 10.1177/1473225419880004
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Lauren Grace Moulds , Richelle Mayshak,
Helen Mildred, Andrew Day and Peter Miller
Abstract
Adolescent violence towards parents (AVTP) is a form of family violence that tests family relationships and
the role of parents and can have lasting impacts on all members of families. This study aimed to explore
typologies of AVTP offenders based on their criminal justice system involvement, as well as explore differences
between groups of AVTP based on their offending. Data were collated by the South Australian Office of
Crime, Statistics and Research (OCSAR) in 2017 and included young people who had been apprehended
by the South Australian Police between 2008 and 2012 for violence against a parent or step parent. There
were a total of 305 young people included in the study, ranging in age from 10 to 17 years. The study found
that there were three different groups of AVTP offenders: AVTP offenders, AVTP non-violent offenders
who have committed other non-violent crimes and AVTP violent offender who have committed other
violent crimes outside of their AVTP offence. Findings suggested that an AVTP offence in isolation is a rarity,
and most AVTP offenders commit other non-violent or violent offending. The study concluded that AVTP
may be a function of general anti-sociality and occur within the context of a pattern of violent or deviant
behaviour, as opposed to a specialist, targeted, isolated incidence of violence.
Keywords
adolescent violence, anti-sociality, Australian data, family violence, juvenile offending, offending trajectories,
parent–child relationships, violence, youth offending
Introduction
Adolescent violence towards parents (AVTP) is a distinct form of family violence that
tests family relationships and the role of parents and can have lasting impacts on all
members of families. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) (2017),
between 2014 and 2015, just over a fifth (21%) of the total offender population were
aged between 10 and 19 years (young offenders), representing 14 per cent of the
Australian population. With one-fifth of the offenders being under the age of 19,
Corresponding author:
Lauren Grace Moulds, Deakin University, 1 Gheringhap Street, Geelong, VIC 3220, Australia.
Email: lauren.moulds@deakin.edu.au
Moulds et al.
207
understanding the relationship between offending and AVTP has important implications
for justice responses such as those from the courts, and for police responses, as well as
for intervention, and prevention.
Explicit consideration of AVTP offending, and the factors which contribute to, and
maintain this form of violence, is likely to enhance intervention approaches. In particular,
understanding AVTP within broader offending patterns and the impacts of this could
inform the development of personalised and matched interventions. The purpose of this
study, therefore, is to explore in what ways various groups of AVTP offenders differ, and
then further to examine what factors relate to whether AVTP is a single event, or behav-
iour situated among a broader pattern of antisocial behaviour.
One of the biggest challenges for AVTP, and family violence more broadly, is a lack of
internationally agreed upon definitions and terminology, which limits capacity for appro-
priate comparisons between different jurisdictions and systems. In Australia, while the
Commonwealth Government of Australia is responsible for the over-arching government
programmes designed to reduce family violence nationally, it is the State and Territory
Governments that have the law enforcement responsibilities in relation to policing and
prosecuting instances of family violence (ABS, 2017). The justice system, in particular,
police, is often the first point of contact for families who are experiencing AVTP; their
response provides the foundation for how parents perceive community reactions (Miles
and Condry, 2016). AVTP is sometimes understood as a form of young offending and as
such is often managed by the youth justice system.
It is unclear whether AVTP is best understood within the existing youth justice under-
standings of behaviour or is significantly different from other youth offending. Moulds
et al. (2016) recently reported prevalence rates of AVTP in Australia utilising police data
from four States. The study determined that, within Australia, according to police reports,
approximately 1–7 per cent of families are affected by AVTP, with the ‘typical’ perpetra-
tor being a 15- to 17-year-old Caucasian young man who is generally violent towards his
mother. Moulds and Day (2017) subsequently concluded that AVTP offenders and their
families have a high level of needs, and members commonly experience difficulties with
drugs and alcohol, high rates of trauma and comorbid mental health concerns. It has also
been suggested that individuals who perpetrate AVTP are more likely to associate with
negative peer groups and engage in other forms of delinquency (Agnew and Huguley,
1989; Kennedy et al., 2010), raising questions about the extent to which AVTP occurs as
part of a broader pattern of antisocial behaviour.
Intervention approaches for family violence offenders have often been predicated on
the assumption that this group of offenders exclusively commit family violence and do
not commit other offences. In other words, they ‘specialise’ and therefore there is a unique
need for specialised intervention (Coghlan and Millstead, 2017). Specialisation in offend-
ing refers to when an offender has a tendency to repeat the same specific offence or
offence type (Paternoster et al., 1998), and there is a reasonably large body of evidence to
suggest that some offenders become ‘specialist’ in violent offending (e.g. Brennan et al.,
1989; Cale et al., 2016; Lynam et al., 2004). Piquero (2000), however, found little evi-
dence of specialisation in violent offending, so there is some uncertainty about the extent
to which AVTP occurs in isolation from other types of offending.
208
Youth Justice 19(3)
Research regarding the relationship between adult family violence and other forms of
offending has been mixed, and this research has all been undertaken with only adult
offenders (Moffitt et al., 2000; Piquero et al., 2006; Richards et al., 2013). While this
research often reports specialisation in family violence as rare (e.g. Piquero et al., 2006;
Richards et al., 2013), it has led to an ongoing interest in the identification of specific
types of offender (see Babcock et al., 2003; Holtzworth-Munroe and Stuart, 1994).
Ventura and Davis (2005) found that approximately half of a sample of family violence
perpetrators had committed at least one serious non-violent offence and about one quarter
had committed a violent offence (non-familial) in their criminal history. Boxall et al.
(2015) found a clear association between the frequency of family violence incidents and
a history of other offending, with almost two out of five family violence perpetrators
(39%) having a prior police record, concluding that there is some evidence of a ‘generally
antisocial/violent’ group of family violence perpetrators. Similarly, Coghlan and Millstead
(2017) found 40 per cent of family violence offenders were ‘generalist perpetrators’.
Furthermore, they found that females were less likely to be generalists than males, and
perpetrators who were younger at the time of their first family violence offence were more
likely to be generalist offenders, supporting the idea that offending diversification seems
to be a function of offending frequency (Farrington et al., 1988; Piquero, 2000; Piquero
and Buka, 2002).
This literature suggests that, for many, family violence may be part of a broader pattern
of offending, although little is known about adolescent perpetrators of AVTP. In the United
States, Gebo (2007) conducted a study with a small group (n = 132) of detained young
people, comparing those who had offended against family and those who had not. Just
over half of AVTP offenders (56%) had other offending charges. In an Australian study,
Kennedy et al. (2010) subsequently explored differences between 223 young offenders,
100 of them, AVTP. They determined that those in the AVTP group were more likely to
associate with negative peers, have made suicide attempts or be hospitalised or medicated
for psychiatric concerns and have poor relationships with their parents. Offending history
was reported to be similar between the groups in terms of the number of previous offences,
but different in relation to the kind of charges, with AVTP offenders having significantly
more violent offences and significantly fewer property offences. Armstrong et al. (2018)
used data from a youth residential placement survey and found that AVTP offenders who
were incarcerated for AVTP were typically White and male. Their study concluded that
young people who initially come into contact with law enforcement due to AVTP will
continue and/or escalate their offending behaviours. Finally, Contreras and Cano have
conducted a number of studies analysing judicial files from Spain for offenders...
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