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BACKGROUND: The ADHD/criminality connection
In 1997, James Satterfield and Anne Schell published an important study addressing
the relationship between childhood hyperactivity and adult criminality. The researchers
followed 89 hyperactive boys and 87 control subjects from childhood through young
adulthood, and found that:
- Compared to the controls, hyperactive individuals had markedly higher arrest rates
as juveniles (46 percent vs. 11 percent) and as adults (21 percent vs. 1 percent).
- There were more juvenile recidivists among the hyperactive group than among the
controls (29 percent vs. 1 percent), and of the subjects who were arrested as juveniles,
more hyperactive subjects than controls were arrested for violent crimes (34 percent vs. 9
percent).
- By adulthood, eight hyperactive subjects but no controls had been arrested for
multiple felonies.
The researchers found that multiple juvenile arrests, arrests for felony crimes in
adolescence, and incarceration as a juvenile predicted criminality in ADHD subjects in
later life. "The younger the hyperactive subject at the time of the first felony arrest," they
said, "the more likely he would become a chronic juvenile offender and eventually be
arrested in adulthood."
Of the 89 hyperactive boys in the study, 73 exhibited conduct problems. Hyperactive
children reported by parents to chronically lie, steal, or exhibit antisocial behavior were
far more likely to become juvenile recidivists and to be arrested as adults than were other
hyperactive subjects. "Our childhood and adolescent data suggest that hyperactivity in the
absence of antisocial behavior does not indicate an increased risk for serious antisocial
behavior in later life," the researchers concluded. "Hyperactive children are nevertheless
at increased risk (five times normal) for developing conduct disorder, thus making them
at increased risk for serious antisocial behavior in later life."
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"A prospective study of hyperactive boys with conduct problems and normal boys:
adolescent and adult criminality," James H. Satterfield and Anne Schell, Journal of
the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Vol. 36, No. 12,
December 1997, 1726-35. Address: Anne Schell, Psychology Department, Occidental
College, 1600 Campus Road, Los Angeles, CA 90041.
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