§ Mr. LawsTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what recent analysis he has made of a link between changes in crime and changes in the number of children(a) born to teenage women, (b) born outside marriage, (c) born into poverty and (d) in one-parent families; and if he will make a statement. [62409]
§ Mr. Denham[holding answer 19 June 20021: There is no evidence of a link between changes in the level of crime and changes in the number of children born to teenage women, outside marriage or in one parent families. Research, however, has suggested that the following risk factors are cumulatively important:
- poverty and poor housing;
- poor parenting (including neglect, abuse, harsh and inconsistent discipline, lack of supervision and marital conflict);
- association with delinquent peers, siblings and partners;
- low measures of intelligence, poor performance and persistent truancy;
- high levels of impulsiveness and hyperactivity; and
- being brought up by a criminal parent or parents.1
The Home Office has also undertaken research to explore the influence of aggregate demographic and socio-economic factors on the level of crime. This demonstrated a link between changes in certain socioeconomic variables, such as changes in GDP, the stock of economy-wide goods, and the number of young males aged 15–20; and property crime.2
Work is on-going to develop and improve the Home Office models and to examine the impact of a wider range of socio-economic factors on crime trends.
184W
1"Reducing offending: an assessment of research evidence on ways of dealing with offending behaviour"; HORS 187.
2"Modelling and predicting property crime trends in England and Wales"; HORS 198.