Explaining Crime Ideology: An Exploration of the Parental Socialization Perspective

Abstract

The claim is often made that criminal justice policy reflects, partially or more fully, the public will. Although criminologists have devoted much attention to the sources of citizen attitudes, a potentially important source of crime ideology has been neglected: inter-generational transmission. Informed by the political socialization literature, the present study examines the role of parents in socializing offspring to embrace views toward crime and control. Based on a sample of 152 parent-child pairs, parents were found to be more influential in determining their offspring's conservative as opposed to liberal crime ideology. Possible explanations and policy implications of this finding are explored.