Crime runs in the family, but not for the reasons most think.
“Social scientists and law enforcement authorities say the influence of family members may be one of the most important and largely unaddressed factors in determining whether people adopt lives of crime.”
So said a USA Today piece, “For many of USA’s inmates, crime runs in the family,” written by Kevin Johnson. He focuses primarily on one such story of crime running in the family–three brothers, Jesse, Frank and Sonny Caston, who suffered an upbringing marked by violence and other abuse. The brothers spent much of their childhood locked out of their home at night and every law enforcer involved seem to agree the boys had a Gothic-like and nightmarish upbringing. Today, all three are serving life sentences for murder.
The problem with such stories is that they fail to mention the use of alcohol or other drugs by the culprits. Journalists, following in the footsteps of historians, seem blissfully unaware of its relevance. Two of three brothers who agreed to be interviewed for the story said they dream about someday being released, opening up a business and “having wives and kids and learning from our mistakes.” A return to normalcy and clear-headedness is symptomatic of recovery from alcoholism, from which over 80% of felons suffer. While correlation is not causation, the more likely culprit is that addiction, which runs more in some families than in others, takes form as a function of circumstances, underlying personality type and environment. Children raised in a culture of violence who inherit alcoholism are perhaps far more likely than others to act out in horrific ways.
A hypothesis more likely to pass the test of time is, “inheriting alcoholism and being raised in particularly violent homes may be the most important factors in determining whether people adopt lives of crime, particularly of the violent kind.”