Adolescent to parent violence: Framing and mapping a hidden problem

Abstract

Adolescent to parent violence is virtually absent from policing, youth justice and domestic violence policy, despite being widely recognized by practitioners in those fields. It is under-researched and rarely appears in criminological discussions of family or youth violence. This article presents the first UK analysis of cases of adolescent to parent violence reported to the police. We analyse victim, offender and incident characteristics from 1892 cases reported to the Metropolitan Police in 2009–2010, most of which involved violence against the person or criminal damage in the home. Our findings reveal that adolescent to parent violence is a gendered phenomenon: 87 per cent of suspects were male and 77 per cent of victims were female. We argue that the absence of adolescent to parent violence from criminological discourse must be addressed if criminology is to have a thorough understanding of family violence in all its forms.