Explaining Crime Ideology: An Exploration of the Parental Socialization Perspective

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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.