Family incarceration and prison adaptation: Investigating the impact of family incarceration history on prison misconduct

Abstract

The intergenerational transmission of crime (ITC) perspective suggests that children of those who engage in crime are more likely to end up offending themselves. Specifically, they are more likely to engage in crime, be arrested, and be incarcerated compared to children of parents without a criminal record. What remains unclear is the effect parental offending has on the prison.experience of their offspring who are incarcerated. Additionally, the impact of sibling incarceration on one's incarceration experiences has not been examined. Drawing on the ITC framework, rule breaking behavior may extend to the prison context. Indeed, the few studies that have examined this relationship find that incarcerated persons who have a family incarceration history are more likely to have rule violations, which suggests family history may be a risk factor for misconduct. To investigate, the current study uses coarsened exact matching and data from the Survey of Prison Inmates to examine the misconduct of incarcerated persons with and without a family history of incarceration net of the effects of other covariates. After matching, results indicate that there is no statistically significant differences in misconduct between those with no family history of incarceration compared to those with a sibling or a parent who has been incarcerated.