Paternal Incarceration and Children's Risk of Being Charged by Early Adulthood: Evidence From a Danish Policy Shock*

Abstract

In this article, we exploit a Danish criminal justice reform that dramatically decreased the risk of incarceration for individuals convicted of some types of crimes to isolate how having a father who was eligible for a noncustodial sentence under the reform affected a child's risk of ever subsequently being charged with a crime. Specifically, we use a difference‐in‐differences framework to compare all Danish children 12–18 years of age whose fathers were eligible for a noncustodial sentence instead of incarceration under the reform [N = 1,546] with a reference group of children whose fathers were convicted of similar crimes but were ineligible [N = 1,852] in the 2 years surrounding when the reform was enacted [July 1, 2000] as a way of testing the effects of the reform on children's risk of ever being charged with a crime by 22–28 years of age. Our estimates indicate that having a father sentenced under the reform sharply decreased the risk of being charged in the next 10 years for boys but not for girls. Taken together, these results indicate that both paternal criminality and paternal incarceration promote the criminal justice contact of male children and, hence, that paternal incarceration is not solely a symptom of criminality but also a cause of it.

Assortative Mating and the Intergenerational Transmission of Parental Incarceration Risks

“…A recent study used the introduction of a noncustodial alternative to incarceration in Denmark (community service) to show that the effect of paternal incarceration on sons' contact with the criminal justice system is indeed causal (Wildeman & Andersen, ). The study did not find any effect of paternal incarceration on daughters' contact with the criminal justice system, adding to our understanding that the intergenerational transmission of incarceration is driven by males.…”

“…This emphasis makes sense because boys who experience paternal incarceration are at elevated risk of physically aggressive behavior and involvement with the criminal justice system at later stages (Murray & Farrington, ; Wildeman, ). At the forefront of this research, a recent study found that the association between paternal incarceration and sons' antisocial behavioral response is indeed causal (Wildeman & Andersen, ). A father's incarceration thus directly affects his sons' behavioral problems over and above other types of disadvantage that may have piled up in families with criminal justice contact.…”

Linking parental incarceration and family dynamics associated with intergenerational transmission: A life‐course perspective*

“…Other scholars have relied on variability in criminal justice policies and procedures to account for these behavioral characteristics. For example, Wildeman and Andersen () used a Danish policy change that expanded the use of noncustodial sentences (i.e., probation with community service) to compare the outcomes of children whose fathers were convicted of similar crimes. Their findings documented the effects of incarceration on the odds of children's future criminal justice contact (see also Harding, Morenoff, Nguyen, & Bushway, ).…”

Administrative Data Linking and Statistical Power Problems in Randomized Experiments

“…Similarly, Gelber et al (2016) use administrative data linking to jointly study the impact of summer employment for youth on imprisonment as well as mortality outcomes. Administrative data linking is likewise an issue that looms large in studying the intergenerational effects of delinquency from parents to children (Chalfin and Deza, 2017;Comfort et al, 2011;Hjalmarsson and Lindquist, 2012;Laub and Sampson, 1988;Wildeman and Andersen, 2017).…”

“…When a unique identifier is available in all of the datasets that require linking and the data are of sufficient quality, linking can, in some cases, be fairly trivial. These types of cross-system unique identifiers are frequently available in Scandinavian countries (e.g Black et al, 2005;Dahl et al, 2014;Hovde Lyngstad and Skardhamar, 2011;Wildeman and Andersen, 2017). and occationally in South America.…”