When Women Reinstate the Patrilineality of Incarceration

• In Event: Intergenerational Transmissions and Danish Registry Data

Abstract

Because male incarceration is so much more common than female incarceration, incarceration is likely to travel across generations in male line, the patrilineality of incarceration. Men who experienced parental incarceration (again, typically paternal incarceration) are far more likely to experience incarceration themselves than are their sisters who also experienced parental incarceration and with whom they share social and family background. These gender differences could then benefit their own children who likely differ in their risk of experiencing parental incarceration because their mother breaks the patrilineality of incarceration. In this paper, I use Danish registry data which link family members across and within three generations to show that these mothers do not succeed in breaking the patrilineality of incarceration. They fail to do so not because they themselves have disproportionately high incarceration rates, but because they tend to find husbands with high incarceration risks. Thus, although female incarceration rates are low, women who experienced parental incarceration themselves self-select into families which reinstate the intergenerational transmission of incarceration.

Author

• Lars Hoejsgaard Andersen, Rockwool Foundation Research Unit