Abstract
Sex differences in genetic and environmental influences on criminal behavior against property were studied in a birth cohort of 6129 male and 7065 female Danish adoptees and their biological and adoptive parents. Both genetic and environmental factors were found to contribute to variation in liability to property criminality, the relative proportions of variance explained being similar in males and females. Important shared- and nonshared-family environmental factors were present. In separate analyses of average liability toward property criminality, however, convicted females appeared to be more genetically predisposed than convicted males, a conclusion based on the finding that female property offenders were more likely than male offenders to have convicted biological (but adopted-away) offspring. On the other hand, property-offending males and females did not appear to differ in their average shared-family environmental liabilities, since conviction rates did not differ for adoptees of convicted adoptive mothers and fathers. Also, social class in the adopitive parents of convicted sons and daughters were comparable, further indicating that average shared-family environmental liabilities do not differ between the sexes.
Article PDF
Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
References
Baker, L. A. (1983).Bivariate Path Analysis of Verbal and Non-Verbal Abilities in the Colorado Adoption Project, Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Colorado, Boulder.
Baker, L. A. (1986). Estimating genetic correlations among discontinuous phenotypes: An analysis of criminal convictions and psychiatric-hospital diagnoses in Danish adoptees.Behav. Genet. 16:127–142.
Baker, L. A., Moffitt, T. E., Mednick, S. A., and Sasao, T. (1985). Sex differences in criminal behavior in a Danish adoption cohort.Behav. Genet. 15:584.
Bentler, P. M., and Bonett, D. G. (1980). Significance tests and goodness of fit in the analysis of covariance structures.Psychol. Bull. 88:588–606.
Bohman, M., Cloninger, C. R., Sigvardsson, S., and von Knorring, A. (1982). Predisposition to petty criminality in Swedish adoptees. I. Genetic and environmental heterogeneity.Arch. Gen. Psychiat. 39:1233–1241.
Carey, G. (1986). A general multivariate approach to linear modeling in human genetics.Am. J. Hum. Genet. 39:775–786.
Christiansen, K. O. (1977). A preliminary study of criminality among twins. In Mednick, S. A., and Christiansen, K. O. (eds.),Biosocial Bases of Criminal Behavior, Gardner Press, New York.
Cloninger, C. R., and Gottesman, I. I. (1987). Genetic and environmental factors in antisocial behavior disorders. In Mednick, S. A., Moffitt, T. E., and Stack, S. A. (eds.),The Causes of Crime: New Biological Approaches, Cambridge University Press, New York.
Cloninger, C. R., Reich, T., and Guze, S. B. (1975). The multifactorial model of disease transmission. II. Sex differences in the familial transmission of sociopathy (antisocial personality).Br. J. Psychiat. 127:11–22.
Cloninger, C. R., Christiansen, K. O., Reich, T., and Gottesman, I. I. (1978). Implications of sex differences in the prevalences of antisocial personality, alcoholism, and criminality for familial transmission.Arch. Gen. Psychiat. 35:941–951.
Fulker, D. W. (1988). Path analysis of genetic and cultural transmission in human behavior. In Beir, B. S., Eisen, E. J., Goodman, M. M., and Namkoong, G. (eds.),Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Quantitative Genetics, Sinauer, Sunderland, Mass.
Hastings, R. P. (ed.) (1986).SUGI Supplemental Library User's Guide, Version 5 edition, SAS Institute, Carey, N.C.
Hindelang, M. J., Hirschi, T., and Weiss, J. (1979). Correlates of delinquency: The illusion of discrepancy between self-report and official measure.Am. Soc. Re. 44:995–1014.
Jencks, C. (1972).Inequality: A Reassessment of the Effect of Family and Schooling in America, Basic Books, New York.
Kety, S. S., Rosenthal, D., Wender, P. H., and Schulsinger, F. (1968). The types of prevelance of mental illness in the biological and adoptive families of adopted schizophrenics. In Rosenthal, D., and Kety, S. S. (eds.),The Transmission of Schizophrenia, Pergamon, Oxford.
Mednick, S. A., Gabrielli, W. F., and Hutchings, B. (1984). Genetic factors in criminal behavior: Evidence from an adoption cohort.Science 224:891–893.
Mednick, S. A., Moffitt, T. E., Gabrielli, W. F., and Hutchings, B. (1986). Genetic factors in criminal behavior: A review. In Block, J., Olweus, D., and Yarrow, M. R. (eds.),The Development of Antisocial and Prosocial Behavior, Academic Press, New York.
Plomin, R., DeFries, J. C., and McClearn, G. E. (1980).Behavioral Genetics: A Primer, W. Freeman Press, New York.
Raine, A., and Venables, P. H. (1988). Antisocial behavior: Evolution, genetics, neuropsychology, and psychophysiology. In Gale, A., and Eysenck, M. (eds.),Handbook of Individual Differences: Biological Perspectives, Chichester, Wiley.
Sellin, T. (1938).Culture, Conflict, and Crime, Subcommittee on Delinquency of the Committee on Personality and Culture, New York.
Sigvardsson, S., Cloninger, C. R., Bohman, M., and von Knorring, A. (1982). Predisposition to petty criminality in Swedish adoptees. III. Sex differences and validation of the male typology.Arch. Gen. Psychiat. 39:1248–1253.
Van Dusen, K. T., Mednick, S. A., Gabrielli, W. F., and Hutchings, B. (1983). Social class and crime in an adoption cohort.J. Crim. Law Crim. 74:249–269.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Additional information
This work was supported from NIMH Grant 39904-01.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Baker, L.A., Mack, W., Moffitt, T.E. et al. Sex differences in property crime in a Danish adoption cohort. Behav Genet 19, 355–370 (1989). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01066164
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01066164