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Criminology
Erin Bright
An Examination of Sibling Impact on Frequency and Type of Arrests among Chronic Offenders
By, Frances P. Abderhalden and Sara Z. Evans.
Introduction
The purpose of this research study is to examine how sibling relationships and behavior influence the development of criminal behaviors. Chronic offenders are individuals who commit a multitude of crimes that average petty offenders. They are often persistent in repeating criminal offenses that they learned through their childhood. This behavior creates problematic behavior or criminal deviant. Individuals who form a habit of crimes in many cases begin with small misbehaviors and minor crimes and then progress with time. Most chronic offenders do not commit violent crimes such as murder and rape. They commit crimes such as petty theft. It is essential to comprehend how sibling’s behavior impacts each other to understand how one develops criminal behaviors (Abderhalden & Evans, 2018). The dependent variables in this study are the measures of the number of arrests for criminal offenses that each respondent had. The other dependent variable is the measure of total arrests. The independent variables include sibling arrests, number of siblings, family welfare, and employment.
Literature Review
Siblings brought up in the same home have related behaviors especially criminal behaviors in contrast to those who grew in different households. The collective encouragement from each other influences chronic offenders’ behaviors. More often, children interact with each other outside the influence of parents. In these situations, children learn and influence each other on actions and behaviors that are not related to the morals taught and learned from their parents or guardians. For instance, from research conducted by Van de Rakt and his mates, they found out that children have a high risk of being arrested when they have siblings who have also been convicted. The research journal states that males are more likely to commit crimes compared to females.
Siblings share the same environment growing up compared to other peers. Siblings who have deviant behavior and are in constant conflict are linked to parental rejection, poor parenting, and harsh discipline. Morals and values are psychological values that siblings learn from each other. Siblings learn both attitudes and behaviors by interacting with one another (Abderhalden & Evans, 2018). Through interaction, they can react psychologically either in a conscious and sub-conscious manner. The criminal behavior of same-sex siblings is more common than that of opposite-sex siblings and males are at a higher risk of committing criminal offenses compared to females. Chronic offenders have a high risk of relapse since they mostly rely on criminal activities to survive outside of imprisonment.
Theoretical Framework
This research uses the learning theory and life course theory to learn and comprehend how siblings affect one another’s behavior. The learning theory’s focal point is the way one learns criminal behavior and criminality. The theorists of this theory state that people obtain all behaviors through interaction with peers, mentors, and family members. The closest and intimate friends and family are the most influential on a person to carry out any criminal behaviors. When a person often relates with people who indulge in criminal behaviors, they are most likely to become a criminal too. Siblings learn behavior from one another by mutual bonding and imitation. Siblings imitate each other’s criminal behavior and attitudes through learning behavior. Imitation can be the beginning of learned behavior which can also be a routine. The learning behavior theory allows us to understand the concept of siblings and criminality (Abderhalden & Evans, 2018). Looking into the direct influence of siblings rather than the whole family on each other’s behavior aids in understanding why some siblings have more criminal behaviors than others.
The life-course theory is also used in this research to explore the notion that criminal behavior roots from early childhood. Peaks of criminality often occur around the ages of 17 to 18 and then start to decrease. The life-course theory states that criminality can change depending on changes in life ways and events that disrupt criminal desires. The life course theory enlightens us on why offenders change their ways from one criminal activity to another. Siblings can have behavior that follows the same pattern because of the constant relations between siblings and family norms exposed throughout their lives. The life courses of siblings are connected and linked to their childhood and adolescent stages and can be transferred into their adult life. However, different individuals have different turning points. The life-course of one sibling can take an extreme turn at a certain point in life which can also influence change in their sibling’s life causing a shift in their course as well.
Research Design and Methods
The research design used for this research is the descriptive research design which was appropriate for this study since they were able to gather information on chronic offenders. The data used was collected from the longitudinal study of criminal career patterns of Former California Youth Authority Wards. They studied the criminal behaviors of men over a 10 to 15 years period whose criminal behaviors led to institutionalization to the California Youth Authority.
Findings
From the data collected the researchers identified that the number of arrests a sibling has leads to a higher rate of total arrests of the offender. It means that for instance when a young boy grows up in a family where his elder brother has had a lot of arrests, the young boy is often also going to have a higher rate of total arrests. The learning theory explains how siblings impact criminal behavior. Behavior is learned and acquired especially from the people one is closer and intimate with (Akers, 2017). Siblings are also a form of peer and thus chronic offenders with siblings with more criminal offenses are deviant peers. Many chronic offenders who are arrested because of a particular criminal behavior such as shoplifting often learn this behavior from their peers who are their siblings. An example is how younger brothers learn how to hunt from their elder brothers; they also learn some criminal offenses such as petty theft. This is because they often spend time together with their siblings than their parents during free time and playtime. During their socialization and proximity, they learn through observation, imitation, and impressing one another.
The other finding is that the number of siblings a lawbreaker has led to a lower rate of total arrests for the criminal offender. Even though from the data collected, offenders with more siblings had fewer arrests, previous research also indicates that having more siblings may result in higher violent arrests. Having many siblings provides a higher exposure to criminal activities. On the other hand, in line with the life-course theory when offenders with many siblings witness the negative consequences their siblings go through they, in turn, commit fewer offenses. Siblings are made to make decisions based on the experiences of their siblings. Some may follow in their footsteps while others may a turning point in their lives and make wise decisions (Morizot, 2018). Personal influences such as unemployment were also an indicator of the offender’s criminal behavior in this research. The more a person is unemployed the high the chances of indulging in criminal offenses to survive.
Limitations and Recommendations
One of the limitations of this study is that they used secondary data and the data collected was over thirty years old. They also only researched males and therefore the findings were with regards to males only (Abderhalden & Evans, 2018). The authors recommended that future researchers should look into gender dyad to examine how relationships differences between male-male, female-male, and female-female siblings on ways of criminal behavior. To add to this I would also recommend future research to also focus on female offenders and how siblings impact female offenders. In the future researchers should also gather data from current data. Old data provides similar and useful data on sibling’s impact on chronic offenders: however, due to changing times some factors that result in the impact of siblings on criminal behavior also has changed. Another recommendation is that future researchers should look into how age differences between siblings affect criminal behavior.
Conclusion
To sum up, everything above the study explores how siblings influence each other’s behavior and in this case criminal behavior. Behavior is learned and through socialization and imitation, siblings learn and imitate what their siblings are doing. This research is essential because as a country we can understand how siblings impact behavior leading to high rates of delinquency in the United States.
References
Abderhalden, F. P., & Evans, S. Z. (2018). An Examination of Sibling Impact on Frequency and Type of Arrest Among Chronic Offenders. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/a45d/310dff7808d90ba4786dbad6c65c3fa9b09e.pdf
Akers, R. L. (2017). The social learning theory of criminal and deviant behavior. Social Learning and Social Structure, 47-89. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315129587-3
Morizot, J. (2018). Trajectories of criminal behavior across the life course. The Oxford Handbook of Developmental and Life-Course Criminology, 96-125. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190201371.013.7
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