“All in the family?”: The Relationship Between Sibling Offending and Offending Risk

J.E.H. Beijers, C.C.J.H. Bijleveld, S.G.A. van de Weijer, A.C. Liefbroer

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

Purpose
The purpose of this study is to investigate the associations between criminality of family members and individual offending. The main focus is on investigating the extent to which criminal offending by siblings is associated with individual offending, as well as the extent to which parental and grandparental offending accounts for this relationship.
Methods
Using official conviction data on three generations of Dutch individuals who are at elevated risk of offending, multilevel logistic regression analyses were performed.
Results
The analyses showed that sibling offending increased the risk of individual offending. Parental and grandparental offending only partially accounted for this association. However, parental offending and offending by grandfathers increased the risk of individual offending as well. Furthermore, the analyses showed that offending by brothers and sisters both increased the risk of offending for both men and women.
Conclusions
Sibling criminality seems to be a risk factor in its own right. Therefore, focusing only on children of criminal parents is insufficient. Furthermore, it was found that almost every subsequent offending family member adds risk for children to offend.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1-14
JournalJournal of Developmental and Life-Course Criminology
Volume3
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Mar 2017

Keywords

  • Siblings
  • Offending
  • Family
  • Sibling offending
  • Parents
  • Grandparents

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of '“All in the family?”: The Relationship Between Sibling Offending and Offending Risk'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this