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Specialized Versus Versatile Intergenerational Transmission of Violence: A New Approach to Studying Intergenerational Transmission from Violent Versus Non-Violent Fathers: Latent Class Analysis

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Abstract

This paper investigates whether fathers who have been convicted of a violent offense transmit criminal and violent behavior more strongly than fathers who were convicted, but never for violence. First, a more traditional approach was taken where offending fathers were divided into two groups based on whether they had a violence conviction. Secondly, Latent Class Analysis (LCA) was performed to identify two classes of fathers, one of which was characterized as violent. Sons of fathers in this class had a higher risk of violent convictions compared with sons whose fathers were in the other class.

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Notes

  1. It goes beyond the scope of this paper to fully discuss IRT in multilevel regression, for more information see Osgood and Schreck (2007) and Sullivan et al. (2009). Latent Class Analysis will be explained in more detail under the method section of this paper.

  2. In the CSDD, 59% of fathers’ convictions happened before the child’s birth, 64% before the child’s 5th birthday, 72% before the child’s 10th birthday.

  3. Social information processing refers to the way people perceive and evaluate social situations and initiate a reaction to these situations (Crick and Dodge 1994; Lösel et al. 2007).

  4. Initially, the intention was to also study daughters and mothers who had been convicted of a violent offense. However, there were only two of these mothers and few daughters. Because the data collection started with families that had at least one boy born in 1953–1954, the data set did not contain families with girls only. Therefore the proportion of males to females in the current sample was approximately 2:1. Furthermore, females tend to have fewer convictions than males. Since these numbers for females were so low, it was decided to focus on males only.

  5. Offspring’s frequency of violent offending was not studied, since the number of violence convictions was sparse.

  6. This follows the Home Office UK standard offense classification of violence (Research Development and Statistics Directorate 1998).

  7. G2 stands for generation 2, the parent, and G3 stands for generation 3, the child. G1 would be the grandparent.

  8. The conditional item probability is comparable to the factor loading in factor analysis.

  9. The N in tables I and IV represent the number of sons in each group. Since the sample also included siblings from the same fathers, the number of fathers was lower than the N of sons. The OR and B values were corrected for this using GEE.

  10. The ‘other’ category consists of a range of convictions, such as going equipped for stealing, being a suspected person, loitering, tampering with a motor vehicle, and cruelty to animals. For detailed information see the Home Office Offenders Index Codebook (Research Development and Statistics Directorate, 1998).

  11. Analyses were also run where weapon offenses were not included in the violence definition. Fathers did not have any weapon offenses. The number of sons with a violence conviction decreased when weapon offenses were not included; from 47.0 to 43.3% in the whole sample of sons with a convicted father and from 54.9 to 51.2% in the sample sons of violent fathers and sons of with fathers with at least two convictions. Using the traditional method, 51.7% of convicted sons of violent fathers had convictions for violence, compared to 41.0% of sons of fathers convicted of offenses not including violence, and 50.9% of sons of fathers who had been convicted at least twice but never for violence. This led to odds ratios (ORs) of 1.5 (95% CI 0.7–3.3) and 1.0 (95% CI 0.4–2.4). Using the classes identified with LCA, 51.4% of convicted sons of violent fathers had been convicted of violence, compared to 40.2% of convicted sons of fathers in the property class which led to an OR of 1.6 (95% CI 0.8–3.2). The relative difference between the two methods was the same as in the analyses where weapon offenses were included in the violence definition. The decrease in OR for both methods was similar when weapon offenses were excluded; in the traditional method the OR decreased from 1.6 to 1.0, using LCA classes the OR decreased from 2.1 to 1.6. Sons of fathers in the violent class still have a higher risk than sons of fathers in the property class, although the difference is smaller and not significant. These results strenghten the decision to include convictions for weapon offenses in the violence defintion. Weapon offenses are a vital part of the constellation of behavior studied in this article. These results also show that LCA is a more sensitive method to study specialization in intergenerational transmission. A more thorough comparison of the two methods will be given in the discussion.

  12. Following the definition used in the traditional method, 65% of fathers in the violence class were originally in the violent father group. The other 35% came from the non-violent father group in the traditional method.

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Acknowledgments

I am greatly indebted to David Farrington and Donald West for the data collection of the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development. Furthermore I would like to thank Catrien Bijleveld, David Farrington, Christopher Geissler and the IoC Writing Group as well as the anonymous JQC reviewers and the editors for their helpful comments on drafts of this paper. I would also like to thank the Gates Cambridge Trust, Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds and VSBfonds for financial assistance to undertake this research. Data collection for the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development was funded by the UK Home Office. An earlier version of this article was presented at the 2010 Annual Meeting of the American Society of Criminology in San Francisco.

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    Sytske Besemer

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Besemer, S. Specialized Versus Versatile Intergenerational Transmission of Violence: A New Approach to Studying Intergenerational Transmission from Violent Versus Non-Violent Fathers: Latent Class Analysis. J Quant Criminol 28, 245–263 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10940-011-9141-y

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