MARRIAGE, IN‐LAWS, AND CRIME: THE CASE OF DELINQUENT BROTHERS‐IN‐LAW*

• Published date: 01 May 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9125.12137
• Date: 01 May 2017
• Author: LARS HØJSGAARD ANDERSEN

MARRIAGE, IN-LAWS, AND CRIME: THE CASE

OF DELINQUENT BROTHERS-IN-LAW∗

LARS HØJSGAARD ANDERSEN

Rockwool Foundation Research Unit

KEYWORDS: marriage, in-laws, desistance, register data

With marriage comes in-laws, and if the in-laws include delinquent males, their delin-

quency could affect the prosocial effects of the given marriage. In this article, I focus

on the effect of having a convicted brother-in-law as a general indicator of this broader

phenomenon of family-formation processes impairing the positive impact of marriage

on crime desistance. I use registry data on all men from birth cohorts 1965–1975 in

Denmark (N=69,066) to show that when a man marries, his new family ties to delin-

quent brother(s)-in-law do indeed hinder his criminal desistance. The results that take

into account the characteristics of husbands, wives, their shared family-formation pro-

cess, and the criminality of male family members suggest that 1) family dynamics tend

to keep criminality within family networks and 2) influences from one’s broader social

network through marriage are important for the protective effects of marriage. Analy-

ses of previous conviction, co-offending between a man and his brother-in-law, as well

as analyses of in-laws who reside in close proximity confirm the two mentioned main

findings. In all, the findings reported in this article add to our understanding of the pro-

cesses by which families are tied, and how these family-formation processes influence

men’s behavior.

Of all the pathways that could lead to criminal desistance, marriage has repeatedly

been emphasized as one of the most important (e.g., Craig, Diamond, and Piquero, 2014).

Scholars of criminology debate whether this important correlation between marriage and

desistance from crime is indeed causal (e.g., Laub and Sampson, 2003; Sampson and

Laub, 1993; Warr, 1998), whether it is confounded by selection issues (e.g., Gottfredson

and Hirschi, 1990), or whether desistance primarily begins before marriage because of

∗Additional supporting information can be found in the listing for this article in the Wiley Online

Library at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/crim.2017.55.issue-2/issuetoc.

The author thanks Christopher Wildeman, Signe Hald Andersen, and Rasmus Landersø for ex-

cellent comments to previous versions of this article. The author also thanks seminar participants

at the Swedish Institute for Social Research (SOFI), Stockholm University. The author thanks the

Rockwool Foundation for funding this research. Last, the article benefitted greatly from critical

comments and suggestions provided by three anonymous reviewers and Editor D. Wayne Osgood

at Criminology. The responsibility for any remaining errors lies with the author.

Direct correspondence to Lars Højsgaard Andersen, Rockwool Foundation Research Unit,

Solvgade 10, 2 Cophenagen K 1307, Denmark (e-mail: lha@rff.dk).

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which per-

mits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

C2017 Rockwool Foundation Research Unit. Criminology published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf

of American Society of Criminology doi: 10.1111/1745-9125.12137

CRIMINOLOGY Volume 55 Number 2 438–464 2017 438

BROTHERS-IN-LAW AND THE DESISTANCE PROCESS 439

cognitive transformations that prepare men for marriage and for a less delinquent life

(e.g., Giordano, Cernkovich, and Rudolph, 2002). Researchers using empirical stud-

ies consistently find lower crime rates among married men (e.g., King, Massoglia, and

MacMillan, 2007; Sampson, Laub, and Wimer, 2006). In fact, the outcomes of this re-

search have shown that marriage is an especially important pathway for desistance from

crime when the bonds between husband and wife are strong and the wife does not en-

gage in delinquent behavior (e.g., Andersen, Andersen, and Skov, 2015; Laub, Nagin,

and Sampson, 1998).

Yet, factors from outside the internal dynamics of a marriage may also influence be-

havior. From Elder’s (1994, 1998) notion of “linked lives,” we know that social control

and social ties constrain individual behavior through networks of social relationships, not

only through dyadic relationships such as a marriage. Social support and regulation occur

(in part) through these networks. Spouses’ lives are thus embedded in social relationships

that extent beyond the married couple wherefore, for example, friends and kin could also

influence the behavior of the male spouse.

The results of research have shown that the relationship to in-laws is important for the

marital ties between the spouses (Fingerman et al., 2012) because it is often character-

ized by ambivalence (Turner, Young, and Black, 2006; Willson, Shuey, and Elder, 2003).

The married couples’ relationship success may depend on the relationship to the in-laws

(Bryant, Conger, and Meehan, 2001; H ¨

ogn¨

as and Carlson, 2010). And as all of us who

are married know, with marriage comes in-laws, and if these in-laws include delinquent

males, their delinquency could affect the prosocial effects of marriage.

In-laws thus constitute a significant group of people because of the link between the

in-laws and the spouse marrying into that family. Spouses are expected to form familial

bonds with in-laws (Bryant, Conger, and Meehan, 2001; Fingerman, Sechrist, and Birditt,

2013). Moreover, spouses not only have to establish their own family—with all the emo-

tions, obligations, and routines that come with it—but they also have to bridge the gap to

their nonblood kin, which might cause stress and hostility between the spouses because

they feel torn between loyalty to their new family and loyalty to their own kin (Bryant,

Conger, and Meehan, 2001). Marriage unites husband and wife, yet despite this unifica-

tion, neither of them is likely to dismiss a family member, like for instance a brother,

whether or not he brings positive or negative influences. Influences from brothers are

then close to inevitable and could affect the inner dynamics of marriage, which in turn

could hinder or strengthen the protective effects of marriage.

In this article, I focus on the effect of having a convicted brother-in-law as a general

indicator of how family factors external to the dynamics of marriage influence the protec-

tive effect of marriage. I focus on brothers-in-law as one example of a nonblood family tie

through marriage that plays a role in men’s criminal behavior. I rely on Danish registry

data to achieve a sample that holds a wide array of information on criminal justice out-

comes and on family relations that are required to analyze how men’s criminal desistance

correlates with that of their in-laws. These data, which have precise measures of family

relations, marriages, and criminal convictions, not only provide criminal justice outcomes

on all men from the entire birth cohorts 1965–1975 in Denmark, but the data also allow

me to pair spouses and link information on the spouses’ siblings and other family mem-

bers (including their criminal justice outcomes), something that would not be possible

with most other existing data sources.