Biopsychosocial Criminology and Psychology

Andersson, A. , Tayebi, N. , Isakovic, B. , Larsson, H. , Larm, P. , Latvala, A. , Hesser, H. , Tuvblad, C. & et al. (2026). Neighborhood social structure in Sweden: A latent transition analysis using registry data from 1991 to 2020.  Cities, 168. [BibTeX]

Ångström, A. , Andersson, A. , Garcia-Argibay, M. , Chang, Z. , Lichtenstein, P. , D’Onofrio, B. M. , Tuvblad, C. , Ghirardi, L. & et al. (2024). Criminal convictions in males and females diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: A Swedish national registry study.  JCPP Advances, 4 (1). [BibTeX]

Oskarsson, S. , Tuvblad, C. , Lichtenstein, P. , Larsson, H. & Latvala, A. (2025). Biological and psychological protective factors against the intergenerational transmission of criminal convictions: A total population, sibling comparison study.  Development and psychopathology (Print), 1-9.

Funding from Swedish Research Council to study protective factors against the intergenerational transmission of crime.

One of the most important risk factors for crime is parental offending, yet little is known about protective factorsthat reduce the risk of intergenerational transmission of crime. The overarching goal with the proposed project is to understand the nature of the associations between protective factors and the intergenerational transmission of crime as well as the relative significance of different protective factors while accounting for confounding effects from familial factors.

The proposed project will capitalize upon the unique resources of Swedish population-based registers, containing longitudinal data on all individuals living and residing in Sweden since 1932. These data sources are readily available and contain detailed information about criminal convictions on an individual level, within families, and across generations as well as real-world data on biological, psychological, and social protective factors. Analyses will be on a population-level and within siblings.

The results promise novel insights into mitigating risk for crime among offspring of convicted parents while taking unmeasured familial confounds into account. By understanding the potential causal nature of associations between factors that reduce the risk of criminality being passed down from one generation to the next, we can focus intervention and prevention strategies more efficiently which will promote safer and healthier communities. Such insights will also be important for informing future research.

Seminar

Jonas Persson, Professor of Psychology, Örebro University

The IDA-program -  past, present and future

April 16th at 11:00 am via Zoom: https://oru-se.zoom.us/j/7833649804

Jonas will give a short history of the IDA-program, talk about past data collections, available data and ongoing recently finished data-collections within the program.

Lower autonomic arousal as a risk factor for criminal offending and unintentional injuries among female conscripts

Oskarsson, S., Andersson, A., Bertoldi, B.M., Latvala, A., Kuja-Halkola, R., Evans, B., Raine, A., Patrick, C.J., Larsson, H., Tuvblad, C. (2024).

Lower resting heart rate has been linked to higher risk of being convicted of a crime and experiencing unintentional injuries. While previous research has mostly focused on men, our study aimed to explore whether these associations also apply to women. We analyzed data from Swedish women born between 1958 and 1994 who underwent conscription, including measurements of resting heart rate and systolic blood pressure. By examining records from the National Crime Register, which entails convictions from Swedish district courts, we found that women with lower resting heart rates were more likely to be convicted of crimes and suffer unintentional injuries. Additionally, women with lower systolic blood pressure were at greater risk of violent criminal convictions. These associations pave the way for innovative strategies predicting crime risk among women.

Read full article at PLOS ONE.

Seminar

Eric Pakulak, Psykologiska institutionen, Stockholms Universitet

Neuroplasticity and social justice: development of a family-based training program for at-risk preschoolers

March 19th at 11:00 am via Zoom: https://oru-se.zoom.us/j/7833649804

I will discuss a line of research from my former lab in the US in which we developed and tested a two-generation program for at-risk preschoolers and their parents. This program was developed in collaboration with educators and was based on research on associations between early experiences associated with poverty and differences in brain structure and function, in particular for regulatory systems that are both sensitive to chronic stress and important for school readiness and academic achievement. The intervention targets attention, parenting, family stress, and self-regulation, and was found to reduce parenting stress and improve child behavior, cognition, and brain function for attention in families living in poverty. I will conclude with a discussion of current cultural adaptation projects, including a proposal to adapt and implement the program in Sweden.