Genetic and Environmental Risks and Developmental Mechanisms Underlying Aggression and Criminal Justice Involvement

Aggressive and violent behavior is expressed differently across development, but for some adolescents, this behavior leads to criminal justice involvement through arrests and incarceration. Further, according to the biopsychosocial model, aggressive behavior is influenced by both genetics and the environment. This study sought to examine the differential impacts of early childhood environmental cumulative risk and genetic risk on the developmental cascade from middle childhood behavioral aggression and lack of control to adolescent antisocial behavior or callous-unemotional traits, to emerging adult involvement with the criminal justice system, and whether the effects of risk were mitigated by receiving the Family Check-Up (FCU) prevention program in childhood. The sample included high-risk youth (N = 731; 50% female, 50% White, 28% Black, 13% Hispanic, 9% Indigenous, Native Hawaiian, or Asian; of these 13% were multiracial; Mincome = $28,993; representative 515 genotyped) involved in a randomized-controlled trial of the Family Check-Up and followed longitudinally across 11 waves from ages 2 through 19 years. Behavioral measures included parent-report of behavioral aggression and observational lack of control in middle childhood, self-report of antisocial behavior and callous-unemotional (CU) traits in adolescence, and self-report of involvement with the legal system at age 19. Results of longitudinal structural equation modeling (SEM) supported a developmental cascade from middle childhood behavioral aggression to antisocial behavior in adolescence to legal system involvement. Early cumulative environmental risk and polygenic risk tolerance (RT PGS) significantly predicted involvement with the legal system at age 19, while RT PGS also predicted antisocial behavior in adolescence. Further, intervention effects were found for the FCU, such that the FCU disrupted the effects of RT PGS and middle childhood aggression on antisocial behavior and CU traits in adolescence. This study showed that the FCU can mitigate polygenic risk, supporting the benefit of early psychosocial prevention programs. Importantly, this study showed initial evidence that prevention programs targeting early childhood conduct problems could potentially reduce rates of justice system involvement, including arrests and incarceration, by the age of 19.