Abstract
As existing literature on intergenerational continuity of criminal behavior is mainly based on data on ‘general’ offenders and their children, the current study aims to improve our knowledge by looking at intergenerational continuity of crime among a national sample of children of organized crime offenders. Judicial data on all (N= 478) offenders convicted of organized crime in the Netherlands (in the period 2008 - 2014) and their children were used to study offspring’s involvement in crime. In addition, a comparison group was selected from the entire population in the Netherlands to examine the relative risk of offending. Results show that almost half of the children of organized crime offenders have a criminal record. Sons are significantly more at risk of offending and this risk also increases strongly by age. Furthermore, the results show the strongest intergenerational relation for violent crimes. Gender of the convicted parent and timing of parental crime also seem to play a role in the continuity. With regard to the relative risk of offending, the results show that children of convicted organized crime offenders are three times more at risk of offending compared to children in the comparison group, even after controlling for the number of parental crimes. In sum, there is a substantial risk of intergenerational continuity of criminal behavior among children of organized crime offenders. Future research would benefit from focusing on how criminal behavior in these specific families is transmitted to future generations.
Highlights
Background informationBackground information for each sample member was obtained through Statistics Netherlands
We explore the criminal behavior of a national sample of children of convicted organized crime offenders in the Netherlands by describing how many of them are registered for criminal offenses, and to what extent their engagement in criminal behavior seems dependent on factors such as age, gender, timing and frequency of parental crime, and types of offenses parents commit
Based on the existing literature, we expect that children of organized crime offenders are at much greater risk of engaging in criminal behavior compared to children in the general population, because of the high levels of violence in organized crime, the criminal persistence of organized crime offenders, and the problematic socialization environments these children seem to grow up in
Summary
There has been an increased and renewed interest in intergenerational continuity of criminal behavior. The CCLS is a longitudinal study into the development of criminal behavior, using criminal record data of a group of over 5,000 individuals (and their families) who were convicted in 1977 Publications on this dataset show that children of convicted parents have a 3.14 times higher odds of a criminal record compared to children of non-convicted parents Farrington and colleagues [12] found, in the CSDD data, a significant relationship for both violence and serious theft committed by parents and children This is in line with research by Van de Weijer and colleagues [37] who concluded, based on Transfive data, that intergenerational continuity is stronger for violent than nonviolent offending. Scholars mention that the interplay between genetic and social learning mechanisms may be stronger for aggressive and violent behavior than for other types of offending [21]
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