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The Criminogenic Family: Families as the Cause of Crime in Research and Policy

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Family Criminology

Abstract

The role that families, and particularly parents, play in our understandings of the causes of crime has dominated criminological research on families over the past hundred years. In this chapter, we explore this in greater detail, looking first at the history of such research and then examining contemporary ‘risk factor’ approaches.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Between 1801 and 1901, Great Britain’s population grew from 11 million to 37 million.

  2. 2.

    In the second edition of Bowlby’s Child Care and the Growth of Love (1965), Mary Ainsworth added a chapter and clarified that ‘delinquency has not been found to be a common outcome of maternal deprivation or early mother-child separation’ (1965: 197). Nevertheless, Bowlby’s initial ideas about the role of motherhood in delinquency continued to be influential.

  3. 3.

    The addition of this fourth style allowed the typology to operate along two key dimensions: ‘demandingness’ and ‘responsiveness’. Highly demanding/highly responsive = authoritative style; Highly demanding/low responsive = authoritarian style; Low demanding/highly responsive = permissive style; Low demanding/low responsive = rejecting/neglecting style.

  4. 4.

    Interestingly, a key marker identified in the first publication of ‘persistently anti-social juveniles’ was ‘inadequate family income’ (West, 1969)

  5. 5.

    The England Riots took place in London and other English cities over five days during August 2011. They followed the police shooting of Mark Duggan two days earlier in London and a subsequent protest by Duggan’s family and members of his community in response to the police’s actions.

  6. 6.

    It is notable that such families are often labelled as ‘hard-to-reach’, both in policy discourse and in academic discourse, firmly placing the responsibility with them.

  7. 7.

    Examples of established ‘off the shelf’ parenting courses include ‘Triple P’, ‘Take 3 Parenting Programme’, ‘Strengthening Families, Strengthening Communities’ and ‘Time out for Parents’. Such programmes often require a high level of fidelity (that is, working closely to the programme instructions) to ensure ‘programme integrity’ as such programmes are often subject to large-scale evaluation research (see Box 2.4).

  8. 8.

    For example, Rodriguez et al. (2011) highlight how the idea of ‘time out’ felt alien to the Latino parents who were collaborating on the adaptation of a parenting course—it was not a practice that the parents were familiar with. As there was no direct Spanish translation for ‘time out’, then a sporting metaphor was used instead. Similarly, the idea of ‘homework’ was re-framed as ‘practice assignment’ to avoid alienating those parents who had negative experiences of the education system.

  9. 9.

    One adaptation of this programme is Keeping Foster and Kin Parents Supported and Trained (KEEP), a trauma-informed group programme for foster parents and kinship carers to help them support children with emotional and behavioural difficulties.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Social Sciences, University of Roehampton, London, UK

    Amanda Holt

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  1. Amanda Holt
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Correspondence to Amanda Holt .

Useful Websites

Useful Websites

National Implementation Service (NIS)

https://www.evidencebasedinterventions.org.uk.

Website hosted by the NIS and the National Health Service (NHS) which provides evidence on a range of interventions that work with ‘looked after children, children on the edge of care or custody and their families’. Features information and resources on interventions including Functional Family Therapy (https://www.functionalfamilytherapy.org.uk), Multi-Systemic Therapy (http://www.mstuk.org) and Keep (https://www.keep.org.uk).

Troubled Families

https://troubledfamilies.blog.gov.uk.

Blog hosted by the UK government which highlights the range of family intervention work across the UK that falls within the remit of the Troubled Families policy initiative.

Treatment Foster Care Oregon

https://www.tfcoregon.com

Website hosted by the TFCO team in Oregon, United States that features information, resources, research and training for professionals interested in the TFCO programme for pre-schoolers (TFCO-P), primary-aged children (TFCO-C) and adolescents (TFCO-A).

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Holt, A. (2021). The Criminogenic Family: Families as the Cause of Crime in Research and Policy. In: Family Criminology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71169-6_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71169-6_2

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