Violence and Crime in the Family: Patterns, Causes, and Consequences: Volume 9

Prior researchers have documented significant effects of family violence on adult children’s own risk for intimate partner violence (IPV). Yet, few studies have examined whether exposure to family violence while growing up as well as emerging adults’ reports of their current peers’ behaviors and attitudes influenced self-reports of intimate partner violence perpetration. The current study based on interviews with a large, heterogeneous sample of men and women assessed the degree to which current peers’ attitudes and behaviors contributed to risk of intimate partner violence perpetration, net of family violence.

Using data from the Toledo Adolescent Relationships Study (TARS) (n = 928), we examined associations between family violence indicators, peers’ behaviors and attitudes, and self-reports of intimate violence perpetration among adults ages 22–29. We used ordinary least squares regression and controlled for other known correlates of IPV.

For men and women, we found a significant relationship between witnessing parental violence during adolescence and IPV perpetration in emerging adulthood, and a positive relationship between current peers’ IPV experiences and attitudes and respondents’ perpetration. We also found that for respondents who reported higher, compared with lower, peer involvement in partner violence, the effects of parental violence were stronger.

We provided a more comprehensive assessment of peers’ IPV to this body of research, which tends to focus on family violence. Studies have examined peers’ attitudes and behavior during adolescence, but we extended this work by examining both peer and familial influences into emerging adulthood.

Research on the intergenerational transmission of violence has been limited by reliance on variable-oriented methodology that does not capture heterogeneity that exists within experiences of violent interpersonal conduct. The current study therefore examines the utility of a person-oriented statistical method in understanding patterns of maltreatment and intimate partner violence.

Guided by person-oriented theory, the current study utilizes latent class analysis, a person-oriented method used with cross-sectional data, to examine the heterogeneity within this transmission process in a sample of emerging adults (N = 150). This study also examined whether the classes identified differed on reported emotional reactivity and childhood family environment.

Three classes emerged from the latent class analysis, labeled full transmission, psychological transmission, and no transmission. Those comprising the full transmission subgroup reported the lowest levels of childhood family cohesion, accord, and closeness. The full transmission subgroup also reported significantly more emotional reactivity than the psychological transmission and no transmission subgroups.

To understand fully the etiology of intimate partner violence for maltreated offspring, a multidimensional view of violence is needed. The current study represents a step in this direction by demonstrating the utility of a person-oriented approach in understanding the IGT of violence.

The practices and arrangements within a family can create grounds for violence. Although we agree that family processes are important, we think that these explanations downplay the structure of families (nuclear, extended) and thereby the ways in which gender relations are organized. In this paper, domestic violence is explored as an intra-family dynamic that extends beyond the intimate partner relationship and which seeps into court rulings of cases of such violence.

Using archival data from 164 Supreme Court case decisions on domestic violence in India for the period 1995–2011, we examine both the patterns of conviction and the complexities of gender relations within the family by systematically coding the Court’s rulings.

Analysis of court rulings show that mothers-in-law were convicted in 14% cases and the husband was convicted in 41% cases. We call attention to the collective nature of the domestic violence crime in India where mothers-in-law were seldom convicted alone (3% of cases) but were more likely to be convicted along with other members of the family. Two dominant themes we discuss are the gendered nature of familial relations beyond the intimate partner relationship and the pervasiveness of such gendered relationships from the natal home to the marital family making victims of domestic violence isolated and “homeless.”

Future research may benefit from using data in addition to the judgments to consider caste and class differences in the rulings. An intersectionality perspective may add to the understanding of the interpretation of the laws by the courts.

Insights from this paper have important policy implications. As discussed in the paper, the unintended support for violence from the natal family is an indication of their powerlessness and therefore further victimization through the law will not help. It is critical that natal families re-frame their powerlessness which is often derived from their status as families with daughters. Considering that most women in India turn to their natal families first for support when they face violence in their marriages, policy must enable such families to act and utilize the law.

By examining court rulings on cases of domestic violence in India we focus on the power exerted by some women particularly within extended families which is central to understanding gender relations within institutions. These relations are legitimized by the courts in the ways they interpret the law and rule on cases.

Primary objective of the research is to study the various forms of violence existent in a cross-regional marriage. This form of marriage is the outcome of gendered marriage squeeze as there is discordance between supply and demand of brides in the marriage market of Haryana. Hence, brides are imported into Haryana from far-off poorer regions of the country like West Bengal, Tripura, Assam, Chhattisgarh etc. This implies a big change or adjustment in traditional marriage behaviour for both the host as well as the feeder society.

Fieldwork was conducted in Haryana and West Bengal to get a first-hand understanding of the research problem. Focussed Group Discussions and In-Depth interviews were conducted to get a nuanced understanding of the issues in hand. An attempt for the first time has been made to study one of the regions, that is West Bengal, which is providing the brides. It is thought provoking to understand the reasons for occurrence of such marriages in West Bengal.

Prevalent socio-economic conditions of Haryana and West Bengal have been analysed to derive the causal factors for such a phenomenon. Haryana is a patriarchal, patrilineal and patrilocal society. Interplay of caste and class has significant repercussions on these brides who are married to the Haryana men. These brides go through a marriage which may not always be violent on the outside but definitely so in the inside. These brides face contestations in their everyday existence.

It would be of significance to the researchers in the field of sociology, anthropology, development studies, gender studies and demography. It would also interest human rights activists.

Family violence is a universal problem which is beginning to grow to a significant scale in Syria. Although it has existed for a long time, the actual characteristics of this scourge in our country are not known. The main aim of this study was to evaluate the family violence in Syrian society.

This work consisted of an epidemiological approach to domestic violence in Syria during the year 2010. A questionnaire had been developed which is used for the study of the socio-demographic profile of families and the study of violence in the family. This study has been conducted on a survey of 365 women.

The analysis of the results reveals the following characteristics: 16% of the women in the sample were victims of physical violence. The youth is a risk factor for these women, the age range most affected by violence (45%) is that of women aged between 20 and 40 years. Violence affects all social, economic, and cultural classes; anger is an aggravating factor of domestic violence; in fact, 27.3% of spouses who assaulted their wives were in an angry state.

The violence in the family is a very sensitive issue and very common, but the exact prevalence of violence in the family is not known. Therefore, the violence in the family is underdiagnosed. An urgent response plan is needed to reduce the spread of this scourge and its consequences.

The present study sought to determine whether or not there is an association between contextual effects of violent socialization on violent youth behavior across different nations.

The data in this study derive from the International Dating Violence Study, a dataset of over 17,000 college students collected in 32 different nations. Variables consist of various scales from the Personal Relationship Profile that focuses on experiences and behaviors occurring prior to age 15 years, as well as national indicators of violence. Multilevel modeling analysis was used to analyze the data.

The results indicate two important findings. First, violent socialization significantly varies across different national contexts and this contextual effect accounts for a significant proportion of variation in youth violence. Second, violent socialization, both within individual families and as a contextual effect within different nations, is significantly associated with increases in violent youth behavior across the nations.

The International Dating Violence Study is a cross-sectional convenience sample of college students, which is not representative of specific nations nor college students. Further, the present study classifies nations as a “community” rather than explore microlevel communities within a nation. Future research should focus on examining variation of area specific norms for subsets of communities within nations with representative samples of a general population.

The present study appears to be one of the first published studies offering empirical evidence for international research on the theoretical argument of the contextual effects of violence within a nation, and begins to increase knowledge among criminologists of such contextual factors being associated with youth violent behavior across different nations.

In face of global deinstitutionalization policy, some aging parents find themselves confronting violence and crime in the family due to abusive behavior from their adult child with mental disorder. The aim of this paper is to explore and understand the meaning given by aging parents to this deviant behavior and the different ways in which they cope with a lifetime in the shadow of violence.

Data collection was performed through in-depth semi-structured interviews with 16 parents, followed by content analysis.

Three themes that expressed the meaning attributed to life with ACMD in the shadow of violence: (1) constructing parental identity in a shared reality of violence, (2) social and family networks as a resource in coping with ACMD, and (3) keeping a daily life routine as an anchor in a vulnerable, abusive relationship

Intervention with such families should focus on the life review process as a therapeutic tool. Interventions should also provide a “safety belt,” including health services, public social networks, and knowledge regarding their right for self-protection.

Old age becomes an arena for redefined relationships combining increased vulnerability, needs of both sides, and its impact on the well-being of the ageing parents. This calls for better insights and deeper understanding in regard to intervention with such families.

Dating violence has, in recent times, been a social problem that has been creating different levels of concern especially among parents, and those in the academia, in Nigeria. Studies have shown causes to be largely due to personality types, but little relate it with violence between the parents of the perpetrator. This study examines the influence of violence between parents and the effect on dating violence among students in Nigerian Universities.

Questionnaires were administered to 460 students who had experienced violence in their dating relationship. The study had 55.7% of the respondents being females.

All of the respondents had experienced dating violence at one point or the other in their relationship. About 36.7% of the respondents reported to having been in dating relationship with a partner who had witnessed violence in the home. Data analyzed using Pearson Product Moment Correlation Co-efficient indicate that the variables of parental conflict and dating violence were significantly positively correlated among the students.

The study was limited because it focuses on only one university, and research in the area of dating violence in Nigeria has not been extensively reported. The study therefore emphasizes the impact of socialization process on dating behavior of young adults in Nigeria as well as the need to have further studies on these dating patterns. This study will serve as addition to the gradually increasing literature on dating behavior of young adults in the Nigerian society.

In the present paper we explore the long-term influence of childhood neglect on violent behavior in the transition to adulthood. In particular, we test whether neglect is spuriously related to violence due to their common association with academic achievement, physical abuse, and general offending. We then ask whether neglect has an indirect effect on violence through its impact on parental attachment, alcohol use, emotional negativity, academic achievement, or staying in school.

We use two waves of data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health (Add Health) and employ both regression models and INDIRECT, a syntax file that allows for the testing of indirect effects using SPSS (Preacher & Hayes, 2008).

We find that the long-term association between childhood neglect and violence in the transition to adulthood is robust in models controlling for GPA, physical abuse, and other forms of offending. Neglect did not have an indirect effect on violence through attachment, negative emotionality, or academic achievement but did have indirect effects on violence through its association with staying in school and with alcohol use.

This set of analyses was exploratory in nature. Further research on neglect should be undertaken, using finely tuned measures and research questions. In addition, our findings imply that the association between neglect and later violent behavior may be intertwined with certain dynamics of physical abuse and alcohol use, which should be further studied.

We descriptively examined measures of family structure, socioeconomic disadvantage, and exposure to crime, violence, and substance use in young adulthood and childhood for those who experienced maternal incarceration as children.

We used data from waves I and IV of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. We compared these individuals to two groups: those who did not experience maternal incarceration and those who experienced paternal incarceration. We generated weighted means and conducted F-tests using bivariate regressions to determine where these groups significantly differed.

We found that individuals whose mothers were incarcerated during their childhoods experienced greater hardships in both childhood and young adulthood than those whose mothers were not incarcerated. Individuals who experienced maternal incarceration reported similar levels of socioeconomic disadvantage and exposure to crime and violence as those who experienced paternal incarceration. One notable exception was family structure, where maternal incarceration was associated with significantly fewer respondents reporting living with their mother or either biological parent.

With the exception of family structure, the childhood and transition to adulthood were comparable for individuals experiencing any form of parental incarceration. These children were significantly more disadvantaged and exposed to more risk factors than those whose parents were never incarcerated. Additional support and resources are necessary for families who have incarcerated parents, with special outreach made to families without a biological mother in the household.

There has been no overarching, descriptive study comparing child and young adult outcomes of those with an incarcerated mother using a nationally representative, longitudinal dataset in the United States.

The present study uses data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Ad Health) to evaluate the effects of exposure to violent victimization in childhood on adolescent delinquency and subsequent adult criminality.

Using Longitudinal Latent Class Analysis (LLCA), the present study investigates whether there are distinct and diverse longitudinal delinquency trajectories among those exposed to violence in childhood.

Findings from the current study indicate that there are three distinct trajectories of delinquency and offending from age 14 to 27 for both males and females exposed to violence in childhood. Further, it appears that violent victimization in childhood bridges the gender gap in delinquency between males and females. Thus, childhood violent victimization, and the fact that females are victimized by parents/caregivers and romantic partners at higher rates than males, might be partially responsible in explaining the narrowing of the gender gap between male and female offending in the recent decades. At the same time, childhood violent victimization also seems to impact males and females in somewhat different ways. Practically, all female victims stop offending by their late 20s, whereas a fairly large proportion of males exposed to violent victimization in childhood steadily continue offending.

Although this study was able to identify the diverse impacts of violence exposure on engagement in subsequent delinquency, it did not examine the unique contributions of each type of violence on adolescent outcomes or the chronicity of exposure to each of these types of violent victimization. We were also not able to measure all types of violence experiences in childhood, such as exposure to parents’ or caregivers’ intimate partner violence.

While early prevention would be the most desirable option for both genders for the most optimal outcome, the retrospective intervention and treatment programs should be gender-specific. For males, they should heavily focus on providing alternative ways to cope with anger, impulse control and frustration, as well as teach empathy, cognitive problem solving skills, verbal communication skills, and tangible life and job skills. For females, most successful intervention and treatment programs may focus on helping the girls through a transition from adolescence to adulthood while providing mental health, medical, and family support services.

The paper uses a unique methodological approach to identify distinct and diverse longitudinal delinquency trajectories. The findings demonstrate how more resilient individuals (in terms of externalizing behaviors) can bring down the mean scores of delinquency even though many other individuals can be severely affected by violence exposure in childhood.

The study presented is a starting point in Spain about the invisible phenomenon of female delinquency behavior and juvenile justice. Studying girls who break laws certainly provides insight into the standards, practices, and social customs affecting young women in a particular time and space, as well as providing clues about the expectations of their gender.

This research is being based on socio-biographic interviews and the analysis of individual life histories (totaling 16). However, in order to increase the validity and credibility of the information collected using this method, further complimentary methods of collecting data were also employed, leading to a triangulation of methods. This consisted of the analysis of social and judicial case files/dossiers (44) and first-hand observation undertaken during one-month stay in a female juvenile reform institution for young women convicted of committing crimes between the age of 14 and 18. The girls could, however, remain at the institution to the age of 21.

Girls are often the victims of what might be called multiple situation of marginality in that their gender race and class have placed them at the economic periphery of society. Understanding their lives and choices of girls who find themselves in the juvenile criminal justice systems also requires a broader understanding of the contexts and process within which their criminal behavior is lodged.

This research has looked closely at the existing theory on women and crime, as well as the forms of participation, the processes, factors and contexts of social exclusion, and the role of women offenders in the Spanish Juvenile Justice.

In terms of the concept of broken home as a juvenile delinquency risk factor, whilst Nigeria and Ghana are culturally different from western nations (Gyekye, 1996; Hofstede, 1980; Smith, 2004), parental death (PDE) and parental divorce (PDI) have been previously taken-for-granted as one factor, that is ‘broken home’. This paper aims to deconstruct the singular model of ‘broken home’ and propose a binary model – the parental death and parental divorce hypotheses, with unique variables inherent in Nigerian/Ghanaian context.

It principally deploys the application of Goffman’s (1967) theory of stigma, anthropological insights on burial rites and other social facts (Gyekye, 1996; Mazzucato et al., 2006; Smith, 2004) to tease out diversity and complexity of lives across cultures, which specifically represent a binary model of broken home in Nigeria/Ghana. It slightly appraises post-colonial insights on decolonization (Agozino, 2003; Said, 1994) to interrogate both marginalized and mainstream literature.

Thus far, analyses have challenged the homogenization of the concept broken home in existing literature. Qualitatively unlike in the ‘West’, analyses have identified the varying meanings/consequences of parental divorce and parental death in Nigeria/Ghana.

Unlike existing data, this paper has contrasted the differential impacts of parental death and parental divorce with more refined variables (e.g. the sociocultural penalties of divorce such as stigma in terms of parental divorce and other social facts such as burial ceremonies, kinship nurturing, in relation to parental death), which helped to fill in the missing gap in comparative criminology literature.

This study is a comparison of male and female delinquent behaviors utilizing a large sample in a test of social control theory.

A sample of 8,363 adolescent 10th graders was drawn from the U.S. National Educational Longitudinal Study (NELS). The sample consisted of 3,774 males and 4,589 females. This work utilized logistic regression and ordinary least squares to determine whether adolescent behaviors such as smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, using marijuana, and other delinquent behaviors are linked to weak social bonds.

The findings of this study provide limited substantiation of social control theory for both sexes. Females who were found to have strong social bonds were less likely to engage in delinquent behaviors than males. For both sexes, the strongest element of the social bond was the element of belief.

These results may be specific to the United States.

Understanding contributing factors to adolescent substance use and delinquency will assist in developing social policy that will support families.

This study provides insight into the differentiated nature of the social bond for males and females. Knowing that belief is an integral component in determining the strength of the social bond will aid in the development of social policies.

This paper addresses the lack of conceptual and theoretical consensus around cyber-bullying and problems associated with over-reliance on mainstream criminological thinking to explain this phenomenon.

The paper offers a critical criminological perspective on cyber-bullying encouraging scholars to engage with fundamental complications associated with the relationship between late-modernity, neo-liberalism and cyber-bullying. It argues for an approach that contextualizes cyber-bullying within the realities and consequences of late-modernity and neo-liberalism.

The paper argues that a robust understanding of cyber-bullying entails contextualization of the problem in terms of the realities of consumption, individualism, youth identity formation and incivility in late modern society.

In addition to challenging extant theoretical approaches to cyber-bullying, the paper has important implications for intervention that surpass the limitations of law and order policies which tend to focus on criminalizing poorly understood bad behaviour or indicting internet technologies themselves.

This paper sets a case study of missing children in the Republic of Ireland against a review of international research to explore broader understandings and responses to the problem.

The study begins by reviewing the literature on pioneering American initiatives dating back to the 1970s and more recent literature from Great Britain where a series of high-profile scandals involving sexual exploitation of teenage girls provoked a number of controversial inquiries into the police and social work professions. The present study was prompted by an evaluation of the 116 000 Missing Children Hotline which was introduced to Ireland in 2012 under the auspices of the European Union (EU) Daphne III Programme by the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (ISPCC).

The central conclusion emerging from analysis of the evidence is that Missing Children Hotlines remain rooted in representations of ‘stranger danger’ and disconnected from repeat runaway children who feature prominently in police reports from formal care settings or family homes and who are actively targeted by sexual predators and criminal gangs. The implications are that systemic change requires grounding in research strategies which combine police data with anthropological studies to give legitimacy to the voices of runway and sexually exploited children.

The study offers original international perspectives on missing children to epistemological research communities in the fields of social work, criminology and policing with recommendations that Missing Children and Runaway Safe-lines are targeted systemically at keeping runaway children, homeless children and at-risk-youth safe and off the streets.