Assessing the relationship between maternal cigarette smoking during pregnancy and age at first police contact

Several types of pre- and perinatal risk factors, such as maternal cigarette smoking, are related to various manifestations of life-course-persistent criminal offending. Studies have reported evidence of a relationship between maternal prenatal cigarette smoking and antisocial/criminal behavior. All of these studies, however, used white male samles, thus limiting the generalizability of research findings. In an attempt to overcome this problem, we employ data from the Philadelphia portion of the National Collaborative Perinatal Project to examine the possible link between maternal prenatal cigarette smoking and the age at first police contact in a cohort of African-American males and females followed through age 17. Logistic regression analysis indicates that maternal prenatal cigarette smoking has a significant effect on the age at first police contact, even with controls for a variety of other risk factors. Although maternal cigarette smoking significantly predicted early onset among males but not females, odds ratios suggest that the effect is quite similar across genders. Future research directions are addressed.