NCJ Number
228591
Journal
Criminal Justice and Behavior Volume: 36 Issue: 11 Dated: November 2009 Pages: 1177-1187
Date Published
November 2009
Length
11 pages
Annotation
This is the first study to examine criminal justice status (having a criminal father) as an environmental pathogen that interacts with a measured genetic polymorphism to predict antisocial phenotypes.
Abstract
Results show that the interaction between a polymorphism in a dopamine receptor gene (DRD2) and a criminal father predicts five antisocial phenotypes among African-American females. African-American females with risk alleles for a polymorphism in the DRD2 gene and criminal fathers were significantly at risk for antisocial behavior in terms of serious delinquency, violent delinquency, life-course-persistent offender status, and police contacts. Gene x Environment detected interactions between DRD2 and diverse environmental conditions, such as delinquent peer networks, religious beliefs , family risk, marital status, and marital stability, in the prediction of diverse phenotypic outcomes, including victimization, violent delinquency, early onset offending, and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. DRD2 x Criminal x Father interaction can be regarded as a homozygous disadvantageous state whereby exposure to a criminal father and to residual ecological pathogens expresses the underlying liability to aggressive antisocial behavior. Research on the intergenerational transmission of antisocial behavior suggests a clustering of criminal and analogous forms of behavior within families but, traditionally, without specifying how heredity and environmental conditions interact to predict crime. Data were collected from 232 African-American females using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. Tables, figures, and references