Crime and the Family

Part I Overview

Chapter 1

A Conceptual Framework for Understanding Crime and the Family

Murray A. Straus and Alan Jay Lincoln

This book is about two aspects of American society that have aroused wide interest and concern: the high crime rate and the changes that are occurring in the family. Typically, the two issues are studied independently by social scientists. One group of researchers studies crime and another group studies families. But there are some exceptions. A few social scientists have looked at limited aspects of how crime and the family are related to each other. One example is research on how family patterns affect juvenile delinquency. These studies have shown that family patterns are related to the chances of a child being delinquent: the closer the bond between children and their parents, the lower the chances that the child wiII be delinquent (Wirshi, 1969; Empey and Lubeck, 1971).

The research on how family patterns are related to delinquency is very important, but it is only one of many ways that the family and crime are linked. Despite studies on some aspects of this linkage, there does not seem to be a recognition of the general principle that crime and the family are interrelated, nor is there a group of researchers who take "crime and the family" as the focus of their work.

There are probably a number of reasons why crime and the family has not so far emerged as a clear field of study. One reason may be that it is something that most people do not want to think about because it forces one to come to grips with the fact that the family is less than the perfect institution which most people want it to be. But that is a shortsighted view. If one is truly "pro-family," then the wisest course is to face up to the problems so that they can be corrected and thereby enable the family to come closer to what most people hope and expect from the family. To paraphrase Schmookler ( 1984), a work preoccupied with the dark side of the family can be dedicated to overcoming the power of darkness.

Although the "perceptual blindness" towards the dark side of the family applies almost as much to social scientists as to the general public, another factor may be more important in accounting for the neglect of this issue by social scientists. This is that absence of a conceptual Framework to use in thinking about the issue and to use as a guide to research. Without such a Framework, it is difficult to know what to look for and difficult to make sense of what is found by research or what is already known. We intend this book to be a step toward filling that void. This introductory chapter preserves a conceptual framework which we have found helpful in grasping the central issues, and perhaps others will also find it useful. The framework evolved by bringing together ideas from both traditional criminology, from the new field of victimology, and from the field of family studies.

The remainder of the book is, in effect, the first use of this conceptual framework because it was the basis for selecting what went into the three main sections of the book. it led us to look at three main issues: crime within the family, crime by the family, and crime against the family. We hope that this method of organizing the scattered literature on crime and the family will also help make sense out of a complex and controversial issue. We also hope that it will encourage social scientists to do the research needed to fill the gaps in knowledge revealed by looking at crime and the family through the lenses of this framework.

Importance of Understanding the Interrelation of Crime and the Family

There are a number of reasons why studies of the interrelation of crime and the family are important.

New insights and New Facts

Preliminary evidence (see Chaps. 4 and 9) suggests that one of the features of American family life is a surprisingly high level of involvement in crime. As a starting point we need to know if this is true, because it can tell us something important about the Family and about crime.

Interdisciplinary studies are likely to reveal knowledge that would nut otherwise come to light. Criminology and Family studies are both well developed fields of knowledge. Many articles are published in journals such as Criminology, Crime and Delinquency. Journal of Marriage and the Family, international Journal of Family Studies, etc. These articles, and the many books which are published each year, indicate that there is a continuing stream of important new knowledge about crime and about the family. But as pointed out earlier, family researchers have tended to ignore the possibility that crime may be as much a part of the family as it is a part of other spheres of life, and criminologists have tended to ignore the possibility that families may be involved in crime as much as any other group or type of person.

This book tries to correct the oversight by putting what is already known about the interrelations of crime and the family into a systematic perspective. It makes use of the theories which have been developed in both fields. Family specialists might be able to achieve a better understanding of families if they can use the theories that have developed to explain criminal behavior, and criminologists might achieve a better understanding of crime if they can use some of the theories that have been developed to explain family behavior. That is one of the reasons why we are hopeful that the study of crime and the family will contribute to a better understanding of both families and crime than can be achieved by studying each in artificial isolation from each other. It may even help achieve a better understanding of ail types of harmful behavior.

Practical Contributions

In addition to the theoretical contributions that could occur as a result of the dual focus on crime and the family, there are also important practical reasons for such an approach.

One reason the study of crime and the family has such practical importance is because so much crime takes place in or against families. Studies of physical violence within the family, for example, show that an average citizen is much more likely to be assaulted in his or her own home than on the streets of the most dangerous city in the United States (Strws, Gelles, and Steinmetz, 1980). So far, no one has done a study of a representative sample of Families to find out how often nonviolent crimes are committed within the family. The preliminary study described in Chapter 4 is a first step in that direction. It reveals a high rate of nonviolent crimes within the family. When these nonviolent episodes are added to the violent criminal acts within the family, it suggests that crime in the family may be more common than crime in any other setting.

However, in many cases, these acts are not defined as crimes by either the perpetrators or the victims. Even when they are defined as criminal acts. Victims rarely ask for protection by the police and the courts. The reasons for not doing so include shame, fear that it will cause more harm than good, a belief that they can '"handle" the situation themselves, fear of retaliation from the perpetrator if reported, etc. These circumstances make crime in the family largely "hidden crime." One of our objectives is to bring it into the open because that is an essential first step in dealing with the problem. Or to put it more directly, anyone who is concerned about crime, should be concerned with crime and the family, simply because so much of it takes place in a family context.

0nce the problem is recognized, the next step in doing something practical about it is to correct the myths and other barriers that stand in the way of working effectively with families. For example, many people believe that assaults and other crimes within the family happen only or mostly in lower class families. That and other similar issues need to be settled in order to design crime prevention and victim assistance programs that reflect the crime problems actually faced by families. If the police, prosecutors, and social service agencies are to act effectively, they need information on the causes, incidence rates, and consequences of crime affecting the family.

VICTIMOLOGY AND CRIMINOLOGY

Our approach to the study of crime in the family partly reflects the new and growing body of work on "victimology." This is in contrast to the main body of criminology which focuses on criminals and the causes of crime. Victimoiogy gives primary focus to the victim of crime. It seeks to answer such questions as whether certain types of people or groups are more likely to be victims, and why this may be true. Victimology also gives greater attention to the consequences of crime for the victim and his or her career. As compared to the focus of classic forms of criminology on the criminal and his or her career.

The perspective of victimology is consistent with our objective of tracing out the links between crime and the Family. A victimology perspective, for example, leads to asking if certain family members are more likely to be victimized than others, and if so, why that is the case. It also suggests looking at both the short term and long term effects of this victimization.

Of course, victimology does not completely ignore the classic concerns of criminology with types of crimes and with the background and careers of criminals, nor does criminology completely ignore the victim and the consequences of crime for the victim. However, there are advantages to maintaining the distinction between criminology in the traditional sense and victimology. This dual focus let us create a typology of family crime by cross-classifying who is the victim by who is the perpetrator of the crime, as shown in Figure 1-1.

The various combinations shown in Figure 1-1 of who is the victim of the crime, and who is the perpetrator, identify the aspects of crime and the family on which this book is focused. They reveal three types of family crime: (1) crime within the family, (2) crime against the family, and (3) crime by the family. Let us look at each of these three types in more detail.

CRIME WITHIN THE FAMILY is represented in the upper left box. It refers to those situations in which both the criminal and the victim are members of the same family. Physical assault is a type of within-family crime that has recently come to public attention under labels such as child abuse, spouse abuse, and abuse of the elderly. Many other types of crime can and do take place within the family, including crimes such as larceny and robbery among family members, extortion between relatives, childnapping in custody fights, some child pornography cases, the selling of one's own children, vandalism and arson of family property, and so on.

CRIME AGAINST THE FAMILY includes those situations in which some person or group outside the family commits a crime against two or more members of the same family. Notable examples here include household burglary, household larceny, and many motor vehicle thefts. Also included in the crime against family type are mass killings, swindling by confidence men preying on families, hostage taking, kidnapping for ransom, community harassment of minority families, and others.

CRIMES BY THE FAMILY is the third aspect of crime and the family to which Figure 1-1 alerts us. It refers to criminal acts committed by the family as a collectivity (i.e. by two or more members of the same family) against victims who are not members of that family. This cell of Figure 1-1 raises the question of the extent to which such common crimes as larceny, burglary, arson, fraud, etc. are committed by members of the same family achy p.oyethe?: In addition, certain other types of crime meet our criteria for crime by the family, including: violent feuds between families, some illegal immigration practices, some child pornography and child prostitution, some organized crime, some vigilante activity, and hereditary criminal castes (see Chap. 11).

NONFAMILY CRIME. Finally, the fourth cell in Figure 1-1 refers lo crimes involving nonrelated groups or individuals. This situation best fits what typically has been the public conception of crime-the mugging, rape, robbery, or attack;.I a stranger or acquaintance.

The relationships identified in cells 1, 2, and 3 of Figure 1- 1, by calling attention to the several possible ways that families can be involved in crime, provides a kind of road map for studying crime and the family. Since it also identifies aspects of crime which have not usually been seen before, it also suggests the possibility that there may be a much greater amount of crime involving the family than has been suspected.

DEFINING FAMILY CRIME

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