Abstract
Kinship ties play an important role in organised crime, but little attention has been paid as yet to criminal families and intergenerational transmission of delinquent behaviour as well as criminal ‘leadership.’ This paper presents the results of an in-depth study of seven families in the south of the Netherlands that produced a leader of a criminal group in at least one generation. In almost every generation, most male and female members of these families have criminal records, but intergenerational transmission of criminal leadership has so far occurred in only two families. There is a range of risk factors that promote criminal behaviour across generations, but an important explanation is that family members select their partners and friends from their own closed and deviant subcultures, and seem to favour those who have already developed criminal track records. Apart from risk factors at the individual, family and social environment levels, criminal behaviour was also stimulated by the seven families quickly taking advantage of emerging crime markets, particularly ecstasy production and indoor cannabis cultivation from the 1990s onwards.
Highlights
The south of the Netherlands is generally considered a hotbed of organised crime (Spapens 2017)
One can hear stories about decades or even centuries of family involvement in these activities. This observation was the starting point of our study of intergenerational transmission of criminal behaviour in families that produced a leader of an organised crime group in at least one generation
In the Netherlands, 25% of children whose parents lived on social benefits were dependent on such benefits (CBS, 2015). This still leaves a relatively large group living in a persistent situation of financial deprivation, which is in itself an important risk factor for criminal behaviour
Summary
The south of the Netherlands is generally considered a hotbed of organised crime (Spapens 2017). One can hear stories about decades or even centuries of family involvement in these activities This observation was the starting point of our study of intergenerational transmission of criminal behaviour in families that produced a leader of an organised crime group in at least one generation. In the Netherlands, 25% of children whose parents lived on social benefits were dependent on such benefits (CBS, 2015) This still leaves a relatively large group living in a persistent situation of financial deprivation, which is in itself an important risk factor for criminal behaviour (see Besemer et al 2017). Except for those whose fathers had been murdered, which confronted the families with loss of illegal income, most children had grown up in luxurious material conditions
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