IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jcjust/v36y2008i3p217-223.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The etiology of criminal onset: The enduring salience of nature and nurture

Author

Listed:
  • DeLisi, Matt
  • Beaver, Kevin M.
  • Wright, John Paul
  • Vaughn, Michael G.

Abstract

Based on data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), the current study was the first to use measures of genetic polymorphisms (DRD2 and DRD4) to empirically examine the onset of crime. Net of the effects of race, age, gender, and low self-control, genetic polymorphisms explained variation in police contacts and arrest, but only among youths in low risk family environments. Moreover, youths with genetic risk factors experienced a later onset than youths without these risk factors. Borrowing from the behavioral and molecular genetics literatures, various interpretations of the findings are discussed as well as a call for increasingly interdisciplinary perspectives in criminology that encompass both sociological and biosocial frameworks.

Suggested Citation

  • DeLisi, Matt & Beaver, Kevin M. & Wright, John Paul & Vaughn, Michael G., 2008. "The etiology of criminal onset: The enduring salience of nature and nurture," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 36(3), pages 217-223, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jcjust:v:36:y:2008:i:3:p:217-223
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047-2352(08)00042-1
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. DeLisi, Matt, 2006. "Zeroing in on early arrest onset: Results from a population of extreme career criminals," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 34(1), pages 17-26.
    2. Eggleston, Elaine P. & Laub, John H., 2002. "The onset of adult offending: A neglected dimension of the criminal career," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 30(6), pages 603-622.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Brian B. Boutwell & Eric J. Connolly, 2017. "On the Heritability of Criminal Justice Processing," SAGE Open, , vol. 7(3), pages 21582440177, July.
    2. Vaughn, Michael G. & DeLisi, Matt & Gunter, Tracy & Fu, Qiang & Beaver, Kevin M. & Perron, Brian E. & Howard, Matthew O., 2011. "The Severe 5%: A Latent Class Analysis of the Externalizing Behavior Spectrum in the United States," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 75-80.
    3. Boisvert, Danielle & Boutwell, Brian B. & Barnes, J.C. & Vaske, Jamie, 2013. "Genetic and environmental influences underlying the relationship between low self-control and substance use," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 41(4), pages 262-272.
    4. DeLisi, Matt & Neppl, Tricia K. & Lohman, Brenda J. & Vaughn, Michael G. & Shook, Jeffrey J., 2013. "Early starters: Which type of criminal onset matters most for delinquent careers?," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 41(1), pages 12-17.
    5. Behnken, Monic P. & Caudill, Jonathan W. & Berg, Mark T. & Trulson, Chad R. & DeLisi, Matt, 2011. "Marked for Death: An Empirical Criminal Careers Analysis of Death Sentences in a Sample of Convicted Male Homicide Offenders," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 39(6), pages 471-478.
    6. Wu, Tong & Barnes, J.C., 2013. "Two dopamine receptor genes (DRD2 and DRD4) predict psychopathic personality traits in a sample of American adults," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 41(3), pages 188-195.
    7. Mancini, Christina & Reckdenwald, Amy & Beauregard, Eric & Levenson, Jill S., 2014. "Sex industry exposure over the life course on the onset and frequency of sex offending," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 42(6), pages 507-516.
    8. Schwartz, Joseph A. & Beaver, Kevin M., 2011. "Evidence of a gene × environment interaction between perceived prejudice and MAOA genotype in the prediction of criminal arrests," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 39(5), pages 378-384.
    9. Rocque, Michael & Welsh, Brandon C. & Raine, Adrian, 2012. "Biosocial criminology and modern crime prevention," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 40(4), pages 306-312.
    10. DeLisi, Matt & Piquero, Alex R., 2011. "New frontiers in criminal careers research, 2000-2011: A state-of-the-art review," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 39(4), pages 289-301, July.
    11. Venables, Noah C. & Foell, Jens & Yancey, James R. & Beaver, Kevin M. & Iacono, William G. & Patrick, Christopher J., 2018. "Integrating criminological and mental health perspectives on low self-control: A multi-domain analysis," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 2-10.
    12. Fox, Bryanna, 2017. "It's nature and nurture: Integrating biology and genetics into the social learning theory of criminal behavior," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 22-31.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. DeLisi, Matt & Piquero, Alex R., 2011. "New frontiers in criminal careers research, 2000-2011: A state-of-the-art review," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 39(4), pages 289-301, July.
    2. Vaughn, Michael G. & DeLisi, Matt & Gunter, Tracy & Fu, Qiang & Beaver, Kevin M. & Perron, Brian E. & Howard, Matthew O., 2011. "The Severe 5%: A Latent Class Analysis of the Externalizing Behavior Spectrum in the United States," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 75-80.
    3. Sivertsson, Fredrik, 2018. "Adulthood-limited offending: How much is there to explain?," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 58-70.
    4. Beckley, Amber L. & Caspi, Avshalom & Harrington, Honalee & Houts, Renate M. & Mcgee, Tara Renae & Morgan, Nick & Schroeder, Felix & Ramrakha, Sandhya & Poulton, Richie & Moffitt, Terrie E., 2016. "Adult-onset offenders: Is a tailored theory warranted?," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 64-81.
    5. Brian Bell & Anna Bindler & Stephen Machin, 2018. "Crime Scars: Recessions and the Making of Career Criminals," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 100(3), pages 392-404, July.
    6. Colman, Rebecca A. & Mitchell-Herzfeld, Susan & Kim, Do Han & Shady, Therese A., 2010. "From delinquency to the perpetration of child maltreatment: Examining the early adult criminal justice and child welfare involvement of youth released from juvenile justice facilities," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 32(10), pages 1410-1417, October.
    7. Jennings, Wesley G. & Piquero, Alex R. & Rocque, Michael & Farrington, David P., 2015. "The effects of binge and problem drinking on problem behavior and adjustment over the life course: Findings from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 43(6), pages 453-463.
    8. DeLisi, Matt & Neppl, Tricia K. & Lohman, Brenda J. & Vaughn, Michael G. & Shook, Jeffrey J., 2013. "Early starters: Which type of criminal onset matters most for delinquent careers?," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 41(1), pages 12-17.
    9. Gomez-Smith, Zenta & Piquero, Alex R., 2005. "An examination of adult onset offending," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 33(6), pages 515-525.
    10. Andersson, Frida & Torstensson Levander, Marie, 2013. "Adult onset offending in a Swedish female birth cohort," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 41(3), pages 172-177.
    11. Sivertsson, Fredrik & Carlsson, Christoffer & Almquist, Ylva B. & Brännström, Lars, 2024. "Offending trajectories from childhood to retirement age: Findings from the Stockholm birth cohort study," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    12. Nikhil Jha & Cain Polidano, 2016. "Vocational Education and Training: A Pathway to the Straight and Narrow," Melbourne Institute Working Paper Series wp2016n21, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne.
    13. Logan, Matthew William & McNeeley, Susan & Morgan, Mark Alden, 2021. "Not-so-special forces? Revisiting the “veteran effect” in the context of prison research," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    14. Terence P. Thornberry, 2005. "Explaining Multiple Patterns of Offending across the Life Course and across Generations," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 602(1), pages 156-195, November.
    15. Lussier, Patrick & Blokland, Arjan, 2014. "The adolescence-adulthood transition and Robins’s continuity paradox: Criminal career patterns of juvenile and adult sex offenders in a prospective longitudinal birth cohort study," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 42(2), pages 153-163.
    16. DeLisi, Matt, 2006. "Zeroing in on early arrest onset: Results from a population of extreme career criminals," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 34(1), pages 17-26.
    17. Paik, Leslie & Giuffre, Andrea & Harris, Alexes & Shannon, Sarah, 2023. "The long reach of juvenile and criminal legal debt: How monetary sanctions shape legal cynicism and adultification," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    18. Barnes, J.C. & Beaver, Kevin M., 2010. "An empirical examination of adolescence-limited offending: A direct test of Moffitt's maturity gap thesis," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 38(6), pages 1176-1185, November.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jcjust:v:36:y:2008:i:3:p:217-223. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jcrimjus .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.