Labeling and Intergenerational Transmission of Crime: the Interaction between Criminal Justice Intervention and a Convicted Parent

Principal Investigator(s):  View help for Principal Investigator(s) Sytske Besemer, University of California-Berkeley; David P. Farrington, University of Cambridge; Catrien C.J.H. Bijleveld, Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement (NSCR) and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

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Project Citation: 

Besemer, Sytske, Farrington, David P., and Bijleveld, Catrien C.J.H. Labeling and Intergenerational Transmission of Crime: the Interaction between Criminal Justice Intervention and a Convicted Parent. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2016-12-13. https://doi.org/10.3886/E100376V1

Project Description

Summary:  View help for Summary  Labeling theory suggests that criminal justice interventions amplify offending behavior. Theories of intergenerational transmission suggest why children of convicted parents have a higher risk of offending. This paper combines these two perspectives and investigates whether labeling effects might be stronger for children of convicted parents. We first investigated labeling effects within the individual: we examined the impact of a conviction between ages 19-26 on self-reported offending behavior between 27-32 while controlling for self-reported behavior between 15-18. Our results show that a conviction predicted someone’s later self-reported offending behavior, even when previous offending behavior was taken into account. Second, we investigated whether having a convicted parent influenced this association. When we added this interaction to the analysis, a labeling effect was only visible among people with convicted parents. This supports the idea of cumulative disadvantage: Labeling seems stronger for people who are already in a disadvantaged situation having a convicted parent.

Scope of Project

Subject Terms:  View help for Subject Terms Labeling; Intergenerational transmission; parental crime; cumulative disadvantage; official bias
Geographic Coverage:  View help for Geographic Coverage England


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This study is un-published. See below for other available versions.

Published Versions

V2 [2016-12-22]

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