Downward Housing Trajectories during Childhood and its Implications for Youth Exposure to Police Contact

Riccardo Valente, Centre d'Estudis Demografics CED (Autonomous University of Barcelona UAB)
Jonathan Corcoran, University of Queensland
Sergi Vidal, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

In this study, we address the heterogeneity in residential mobility frequency to analyse the relationship between changing residential addresses as a child and police contact at age 14. Using disaggregate data from the UK Millennium Cohort Study (N=11,176), our findings from logistic regressions reveal that the number of residential moves being equal, downward housing trajectories (in cost-burned households or due to eviction) increased adolescents’ odds of involvement in a police-initiated contact (stop and search, caution, or arrest). Conversely, exposure to police contact is significantly lower for adolescents who did not move and for those who moved but did so within the context of stable homeownership. The association between the downward housing spiral and police contact is only partially conveyed by adolescents’ unlawful behaviours. Mediation tests based on the Karlson-Holm-Breen (KHB) decomposition method show that substance abuse and property delinquency contribute together 7.6 to 22.8 per cent to the total effect. Housing hardship produces, however, more pronounced undesirable effects in terms of externalising behaviour problems, school disengagement, and social severance, all of which are connected to a greater probability of youth-police interactions.

Keywords: Inequality, Disadvantage and Discrimination

See extended abstract.