Mikko Aaltonen

• PhD
• Research Director at University of Helsinki

Objectives To test the effect of local, industry-specific labour demand on employment and recidivism following a person’s release from a prison in Finland. Methods This study was an observational study based on administrative data. The data included all working-aged men (N = 33,270) released from prison between 2007 and 2018 in Finland. We analyse...

This study examines survey-based and register-based trends in youth delinquency, namely theft and assault, in Finland over the past two decades. Our survey data includes data from five measuring points between 2004 and 2020. Our register data includes all individuals born in Finland between 1986 and 2000 who were alive and who were residing in Finl...

Background Associations between violent victimisation and psychiatric disorders are hypothesised to be bidirectional, but the role of violent victimisation in the aetiologies of psychiatric disorders and other adverse outcomes remains unclear. We aimed to estimate associations between violent victimisation and subsequent common psychiatric disorder...

Instead of focusing on the transition to work as an indicator of social integration after imprisonment, this study approaches reintegration as a process. The labour market paths of Dutch men were mapped using the number and type of transitions, their duration and order in the first four post-prison years. To identify seven clusters with diverse lab...

Background Associations between violent victimisation and psychiatric disorders are hypothesised to be bidirectional, but the role of violent victimisation in the aetiologies of psychiatric disorders and other adverse outcomes remains unclear. We aimed to estimate associations between violent victimisation and subsequent common psychiatric disorder...

Introduction Drug courts are criminal justice programs to divert people with substance use disorders from incarceration into treatment. Drug courts have become increasingly popular in the US and other countries. However, their effectiveness in reducing important public health outcomes such as recidivism and substance-related health harms remains am...

Väkivaltarikoksia, kuten muitakin rikoksia, tehdään nuoruusiässä enemmän kuin myöhemmin elämänkaarella, mutta teot ovat tyypillisesti yksittäisiä ja lieviä. Sen sijaan vakavampi ja toistuvampi väkivaltarikollisuus kasautuu pienelle joukolle ihmisiä, joiden rikosurat tyypillisesti alkavat aikaisin, ovat suhteellisen pitkiä ja sisältävät monenlaisia...

Aims: To explore the potential of administrative data in assessment of the association between parental socioeconomic position (SEP) and children's violent victimization by biological parents. Methods: A longitudinal register-linkage study based on child-mother and child-father data, including all children born in Finland between 1991 and 2017....

Background: Parental psychiatric disorders are known risk factors for adolescent self-harm. Although this association is likely to have a bidirectional element, evidence on changes in parental psychiatric treatment following offspring self-harm is scarce. Methods: Finnish children born in 1987-1996 with a hospital-treated episode of self-harm be...

The effects of marriage on criminal behavior have been studied extensively. As marriages today are typically preceded by cohabiting relationships, there is a growing need to clarify how different relationship types are associated with criminality, and how these effects may be modified by relationship duration, partner’s criminality, and crime type....

Objective: This study analyzes the victimization trajectories of partner violence against women surrounding divorce, depending on whether the couple has children together. Background: Prior studies have found that partner violence is associated with an increased risk of divorce. No study has assessed the victimization trajectories surrounding di...

In our recent paper,¹ we examined associations between family income during childhood and adolescence on subsequent risks of developing psychiatric disorders, having substance misuse problems and being arrested for a violent crime. We used nationwide population data on 650 680 individuals born in Finland between 1986 and 1996 and their siblings. Ou...

Background Individuals in higher socioeconomic positions tend to utilise more mental health care, especially specialist services, than those in lower positions. Whether these disparities in treatment exist among adolescents and young adults who self-harm is currently unknown. Methods The study is based on Finnish administrative register data on al...

Introduction The aim was to analyse whether age at first drug offense predicts premature mortality and morbidity due to substance use and violence among adolescents and young adults. Methods A prospective longitudinal register-linkage study based on a total population sample from Finland including individuals born between 1987 and 1992 and aged 15...

"Kyberrikollisuus on nouseva rikollisuuden muoto ja perinteinen rikollisuus on siirtynyt myös voimakkaasti verkkovälitteiseksi. Kyberrikosten kansallisen rikosoikeuden sisältöön vaikuttaa voimakkaasti kansainvälinen sääntely, jonka myötä rikoslakiin on tehty lukuisia uudistuksia ja teknisiä muutoksia viime vuosikymmenien aikana. Artikkelin tavoitte...

Importance Children who are placed in out-of-home care may have poorer outcomes in adulthood, on average, compared with their peers, but the direction and magnitude of these associations need clarification. Objective To estimate associations between being placed in out-of-home care in childhood and adolescence and subsequent risks of experiencing...

Background Childhood family income has been shown to be associated with later psychiatric disorders, substance misuse and violent crime, but the consistency, strength and causal nature of these associations remain unclear. Methods We conducted a nationwide cohort and co-sibling study of 650 680 individuals (426 886 siblings) born in Finland betwee...

Rikollisuutta koskevien rekisteriaineistojen tutkimuskäyttö on lisääntynyt 2000-luvulla voimakkaasti Pohjoismaissa ja myös Suomessa. Kriminologisen tutkimuksen mahdollisuudet ovat parantuneet rekisterilinkkausaineistojen aikaisempaa paremman saatavuuden myötä, ja erityisesti Tilastokeskuksen etäkäyttöjärjestelmä FIONA:n perustaminen on ollut tärkeä...

The association between neighborhood disadvantage and crime has been extensively studied, but most studies have relied on cross-sectional data and have been unable to separate potential effects of the neighborhood from selection effects. We examined how neighborhood disadvantage and offender concentration are associated with criminal behavior while...

Low childhood income is an established risk factor of self-harm in adolescence and young adulthood, and childhood income is additionally associated with various correlates of self-harm. How these correlates, such as psychiatric disorders, substance abuse, violent behaviour and school problems, mediate the effect of childhood income on self-harm, is...

Speeding is dangerous and contributes significantly to traffic safety. Despite that, speeding is not perceived as serious crime, and has been a relatively neglected topic in criminology. The purpose of this study is to analyse the effects of different temporal characteristics and weather conditions on speeding sanction rates in automatic traffic en...

Background Sibling resemblance in crime may be due to genetic relatedness, shared environment, and/or the interpersonal influence of siblings on each other. This latter process can be understood as a type of ‘peer effect’ in that it is based on social learning between individuals occupying the same status in the social system (family). Building on...

Background Earlier studies, based on data collected among juvenile court clients or prisoners, suggest that there is an association between trauma and adolescent-onset offending. However, there is a lack of large-scale data on juvenile violence and clinical mental health observations with unselected participants, and a risk-factor-oriented research...

Objectives Simple calculations seem to show that larger studies should have higher statistical power, but empirical meta-analyses of published work in criminology have found zero or weak correlations between sample size and estimated statistical power. This is “Weisburd’s paradox” and has been attributed by Weisburd et al. (in Crime Justice 17:337–...

Purpose This study analyzes the pathways leading to violent offending. We examine whether the lethality of a violent crime could be predicted based on individuals' prior history of violent crime and income, and whether the trajectories of lethal offenders are distinguishable from the pathways of non-lethal offenders. Methods We use a sample of pol...

Those in the most criminally active age groups are facing particular difficulties in entering the labour market and accumulating stable work experiences. This study uses a large representative sample of Finnish adolescents to examine how different labour market statuses are associated with crime. Both for men and women, within-individual variation...

The report ‘Finland as a Growth Environment for the Next Generation’ examines the lives of the children born in Finland in 1997 who had at least one parent who was born abroad. The course of the children’s lives is followed from birth to adulthood, with the subjects grouped accord¬ing to their parents’ country of birth. The report examines the soci...

Security personnel are among the occupation groups with the highest risk of workplace violence, but the latest Finnish estimates on the prevalence of violence are based on data collected 15 years ago, after which the sector and its regulation have evolved considerably. The aim of this article is to present results from a recent survey of security p...

Introduction Previous studies suggest that childhood experience of parental adversities increases the risk of subsequent offspring self-harm, but studies on distinct paternal and maternal characteristics are few and it remains unclear how these interact with childhood social position. The study aims to assess whether paternal and maternal adversiti...

The report titled Suomi lasten kasvuympäristönä (Finland as a growth environment for children) describes the life course of children born in Finland in 1997 until adulthood. The report examines children’s welfare from a number of dimensions: school performance, somatic and mental health, rehabilitation, child protection and crime. The cohort’s well...

The effects of substance abuse on other family members are not fully established. We estimate the contribution of parental substance abuse on offspring psychiatric morbidity in late adolescence and early adulthood, with emphasis on the timing and persistency of exposure. We used a nationally representative 20% sample of Finnish families with childr...

The aim of this study was to explore how particular economic and demographic factors contribute to the level of the child maintenance payment (CMP) paid by the non‐resident parent. For this study, we used 5‐year longitudinal panel data from years 2009 to 2013 consisting of over 80,000 non‐resident parents from the Finnish Tax Administration and The...

Objectives To examine short-term associations between offending and victimization using daily data on criminal offenses. We also examine the within-individual association between several types of offenses and victimization and see whether incidents closer together in time are more likely reflect revenge motives. Method We use total data on all vic...

This chapter focuses on life-course studies of employment and crime. It draws predominantly on quantitative results, but evidence from qualitative life-course studies are discussed as well. The purpose here is to provide an informed assessment of state-of-the-art scholarship. This chapter reviews studies that examine the capacity of employment (job...

Using data from Finland, this paper contributes to a small but growing body of research regarding adult children’s education, occupation, and income and their parents’ mortality at ages 50+ in 1970-2007. Higher levels of Children’s education are associated with 30-36 per cent lower parental mortality at ages 50-75, controlling for parents’ educatio...

The need to establish an official entry-ban system has been discussed in the recent years in Finland, as concerns about security risks and spectator violence have been raised particularly in the context of football. However, we do not know much about the level and development of security risks in sporting events in Finland. The purpose of this arti...

Objective Despite recent research demonstrating associations between violence and depression in adults, links in adolescents are uncertain. This study aims to assess the longitudinal associations between young people’s depression and later violent outcomes. Method We used data from three cohorts with different measurements of depression exposures...

Background: There is evidence from around the world that disruptive behaviour during adolescence is associated with increased risk of later criminality. Outcomes for young people placed in the Finnish residential school because of severe conduct problems are not known. Aims: Our aims were to investigate criminality after leaving a residential sc...

This article concerns severe financial problems that develop after leaving parental home. It analyses the development of financial problems after leaving one's parental home, and considers how financial problems are associated with likelihood of boomeranging (i.e. adult children returning to parental home). The 9-year follow-up study focused on a n...

Lethal violence is often seen as the tip of the iceberg and homicide perpetrators are seen as manifesting the most extreme number of various risk factors. This article explores whether that is the case. Using a unique data set combining data from several administrative registers with a nationally representative sample of different types of police-r...

Much of the existing research on hate crime focuses on the perspective of victims, while relatively little is known of the offenders. This study examines the prevalence of hate-motivated offending in the form of assaults and bullying, and variables that may explain some of the influences for such behaviour. It compares hate-motivated offenders to b...

Background The use of antidepressants, especially selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), has been questioned due to poor efficacy and safety. We examined whether young violent offenders were more likely antidepressant users prior to their first violent offence than other young persons. Methods The study is a follow-up of children born in...

This study assessed whether the higher risk of victimization among criminally active and socially disadvantaged individuals is related to violent incidents including offenders with criminal backgrounds. The analysis is based on a Finnish general population sample (N = 69,635) using a 7-year-follow-up of police-reported violent incidents that enable...

The few existing studies on the association between debt problems and crime have suggested that the two are correlated, but the causal nature and direction of this association has been unclear. By using longitudinal register data (N = 20,696) from Finland on young adults’ debt default and crime, we examine the potentially reciprocal association bet...

Employment plays a crucial role in the re-entry process and in reducing recidivism among offenders released from prison. But at the same time, imprisonment is generally regarded as harmful to post-release employment prospects. Little is known, however, about whether or not offenders’ employment trajectories before and after imprisonment are similar...

This register-based panel study analyzed the impacts of key life events on debt problems among emerging adults using a within-individual design. In this study, 8093 Finnish young people (born 1988–1990) were monitored for 9 years (2005–2013). The data comprised information from administrative registers, including information about debt enforcement,...

Revenge is a well-recognised motive for crime and violence. In sociological research, this topic has been pursued primarily in ethnographic studies of street offenders or gang conflicts. Psychologists have studied revenge behaviour experimentally in laboratory settings and revenge ideation with community samples. Despite these contributions, we kno...

After a high-profile homicide case, there is often discussion in the media on whether or not the killing was caused or facilitated by a psychotropic medication. Antidepressants have especially been blamed by non-scientific organizations for a large number of senseless acts of violence, e.g., 13 school shootings in the last decade in the U.S. and Fi...

Differences in the crime involvement of immigrants and the native population have been a major topic in criminology for decades. This interest stems from the fact that immigrants are overrepresented in the crime statistics of many European countries. Our study compares delinquency among native and immigrant youth in Finland. The analysis is based o...

Recent research has questioned the causal effect of employment on desistance from crime. The aim of the current study was to examine the post-release employment trajectories of Finnish inmates convicted to prison in 2004–05 (n = 1,998) who are desisting from crime, using varying criteria. While a majority of the inmates received some salary from wo...

Many developed Western countries have seen rapid rises in personal debt and consumer credit during recent decades. Debt problems have become a widely recognized and common concern. This study analysed debt problems among the Finnish adult population from 2005 to 2013. Previous research on indebtedness and financial problems has relied on surveys, a...

The term ‘infanticide’ refers to the homicide of a child younger than one year old. In this article, we describe infanticide trends in 28 industrialized countries between 1960 and 2009. The analysis is based on the cause of death data from the WHO Mortality Database and national materials. The purpose is to compare those trends in all these 28 coun...

The purpose of the current study was to examine whether the relationship between childhood family income and risk of violent victimization has changed between 1988 and 2007 in Finland, as prior studies have suggested that socioeconomic differences in exposure to violence have increased during the recent decades. Existing studies have mostly relied...

Events and conditions during childhood have been found to affect health and mortality at later stages in life. We studied whether childhood conditions explain the observed all-cause and cause-specific mortality disparity between income groups in adulthood. We used a 10% register linked sample of Finnish households in the 1950 census identifying 51...

AimsTo examine gradual change in debt problems, divorce and income among men in Finland before and after a first conviction for driving under the influence (DUI).Design and SettingA register-based longitudinal study conducted in Finland between 1999 and 2013.ParticipantsA nationally representative sample of 70 659 Finnish males born between 1918 an...

Background Individuals with high psychopathy scores are capable of providing valid self-reports on their own personality traits, but there have been no empirical studies of the effect of psychopathic features on responding to sensitive survey questions about specific behaviours.AimsThe aim of this study is to investigate any relationship between fa...

Domestic violence often remains a hidden crime. After a reform to the Finnish Penal Code in 2011, the police are now required to investigate petty assaults that occur between intimate partners even without the victim’s consent. In the year following the reform, Finland saw a substantial increase in police-recorded domestic violence. Given that actu...

This research examined intergenerational educational mobility as an antecedent of criminal offending. Anomie theory and the general theory of crime assume an inverse association between intergenerational mobility and criminal behaviour. In addition, Moffitt’s taxonomic theory and general strain theory expect intergenerational continuity in low educ...

Immigrants are known to be overrepresented in the crime statistics of Nordic countries. However, the composition of immigrant populations varies across countries both in terms of immigrants’ country of origin as well as their population structure (age and sex). Cross-country comparison of crime rates is always difficult because of differences in le...

While illegal downloading of copyrighted content from the Internet is a very common form of law-breaking, it has attracted relatively little attention among criminologists. Using the Finnish Self-Report Delinquency Survey 2012 (n = 4,855), the current study analyses the overlap between traditional juvenile crime and intensity of illegal downloading...

Research on social class and crime is dominated by perspectives that assume socioeconomic disadvantage to exert causal influence on offending. As an alternative approach, the present study examined hypotheses derived from a social selection perspective which treats intergenerational continuity in antisocial propensity as the primary source of socio...

This article examines whether the relationship between unemployment and criminal offending depends on the type of crime analyzed. We rely on fixed‐effects regression models to assess the association between changes in unemployment status and changes in violent crime, property crime, and driving under the influence (DUI) over a 6‐year period. We als...

Objective: Positive outcomes associated with opioid substitution treatment include reduced illicit opioid use and lower risk of HIV and other blood-borne infections. The effect on the reduction of criminal activity remains unclear. Our aim was to investigate the impact of treatment on criminal activity using conviction register data. Method: Thi...

Research on socioeconomic differences in violent victimization has relied on surveys. Nationally representative register-based data sets, increasingly used in Nordic criminology, have not been used in such research. We analyse socioeconomic differences in violent victimization in Finland using both survey and register-based data, and assess whether...

While low socio-economic status (SES) is generally accepted as a risk factor for violence, some have argued that intimate partner violence (IPV) is a ‘classless’ crime. We examine the effects of SES and prior criminal record on different types of police-reported violence committed in 2005–07 by Finnish men using a register-based general population...

Aims This paper examines how the frequency of adolescent drinking predicts total violent victimisation (while sober or intoxicated) vs. victimisation while sober. Background The general correlations between alcohol use and violence among adolescents are well established. However, the nature of the association is less clear. While some findings sho...

Despite decades of research on the association between socio-economic status (SES) and crime, its strength and nature remain contested. Using a unique dataset combining data from several administrative registers with a nationally representative sample of 28,485 19 to 30-year-old Finnish citizens, we examine SES differences in violent offences, prop...

Aims: The aim of this study was to examine to what extent reported harms and risk behaviours related to alcohol use were associated with 15–16-year-old adolescents' frequency of alcohol drinking, subjective state of intoxication, self-control, and family factors such as parental control, family composition, and family's financial situation. Methods...

We attempt to isolate the effects of alcohol on different types of delinquent behavior by identifying the spurious portion of the relationship. Using data on adolescents from Finland, we compare the relationship between drinking and delinquent behavior while sober to the total relationship between drinking and delinquent behavior (sober or not). Fo...

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