Transmission of violent offending and crime across three generations

We previously reported 24-fold risk (OR) of violent crime and 17-fold risk for criminal offending among adult children of homicide recidivistic offenders (HR). However, there exist neither published data on the quantitative risk for crime or violent offending among parents of violent offenders, nor data on the transmission of the increased prevalence of crime across three generations.

In this naturalistic case-control cohort study all HR subjects (G2, n = 35) were extracted from the total of 1584 homicide offenders who were convicted in Finland during 1981-1993. The criminal records and prison documents from their parents (G1, n = 68), and the matched controls (n = 136), were studied, and compared with the previously published data from their children (G3, n = 11) and the controls (n = 220).

Among the G1 parents of HR, the odds ratio (OR) for committing any crime was 5.0 (95% CI = 1.3-23.1) but the risk for violent offending was not significantly increased (OR = 3.1, 95% CI = 0.3-37.6). The prevalence of index persons convicted for any crime (versus controls) was 13.2% (versus 2.9%) in G1 and 36.4% (versus 3.2%) in G3. Only 4.4% (versus 1.5%) of G1 index parents, as compared to 18.2% (versus 0.9%) of G3 had convictions for violent crimes. The disparity of the proportions of criminal offenders between index versus control groups had increased across generations (P = 0.0023). This was also the case with violent offenders (P = 0.0019).

The homicide recidivistic offenders had parents with 5-fold risk for any crime but, without significant risk for violent offending. The results provide the first evidence of transmission of crime across three generations, and also of the increased risk of crime among parents of violent offenders.