Risk factors for crime among individuals with criminal parents – a sibling comparison study

• In Event: Intergenerational Criminology WG Panel 1

Abstract

Children of parents with criminal convictions are at an elevated risk of engaging in criminal behavior, likely due to a combination of genetic and environmental influences. Although numerous risk factors for criminality have been identified, their significance in an already high-risk group of offspring of convicted parents remains largely unexplored. Furthermore, few studies have utilized sibling-comparison designs in high-risk families to account for shared genetic and environmental factors, which is a step towards examining the independent effect these risk factors may have on criminal behavior.
This study aims to examine the associations between multiple individual risk factors and criminal convictions among offspring of parents with criminal convictions, while accounting for genetic and environmental influences shared by siblings. We conducted a cohort study of all individuals born between 1987 and 2004 who had at least one biological parent that have ever been convicted of a crime and who were alive and residing in Sweden at their 15th birthday (N=921,908). We obtained data by linking Swedish population-based registers. The risk factors assessed include psychiatric disorders, traumatic brain injury, violent victimization, school performance, cognitive ability, psychosocial functioning, birth-related factors, and physiological factors such as resting heart rate and systolic blood pressure. We conducted survival analyses to test associations between these risk factors and criminal convictions, adjusting for familial confounding through sibling-comparison analysis of discordant siblings on these factors. As the study is ongoing, we will present results and discuss their potential implications during the conference.

Authors

• Rebecca Siponen, University of Helsinki

• Sofi Oskarsson, Örebro University

• Paul Lichtenstein, Karolinska Institute

• Antti Latvala, University of Helsinki