title: Criminal offending and the family environment: Swedish national high-risk home-reared and adopted-away co-sibling control study.
abstract: Criminal offending is strongly transmitted across generations.
  
  
  
  To clarify the contribution of rearing environment to cross-generational transmission of crime.
  
  
  
  Using Swedish national registries, we identified 1176 full-sibling and 3085 half-sibling sets from high-risk families where at least one sibling was adopted and the other raised by the biological parents.
  
  
  
  Risk for criminal conviction was substantially lower in the full- and half-siblings who were adopted v. home-reared (hazard ratios (HR) = 0.56, 95% CI 0.50-0.64 and 0.60, 95% CI 0.56-0.65, respectively). The protective effect of adoption was significantly stronger in sibships with two v. one high-risk parent.
  
  
  
  Using matched high-risk full- and half-siblings, we found replicated evidence that (a) rearing environment has a strong impact on risk for criminal conviction, (b) high-quality rearing environments have especially strong effects in those at high familial risk for criminal offending and (c) the protective effects of adoption are stronger for more severe crimes and for repeated offending.
authors.affiliation: Kenneth S. Kendler, MD, Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics, Department of Psychiatry and Department of Human and Molecular Genetics, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia, USA; Nancy A. Morris, PhD, Department of Criminal Justice, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia, USA; Henrik Ohlsson, PhD, Sara Larsson Lönn, PhD, Center for Primary Health Care Research, Lund University, Malmö, Sweden; Jan Sundquist, MD, PhD, Kristina Sundquist, MD, PhD, Center for Primary Health Care Research, Lund University, Malmö, Sweden and Stanford Prevention Research Center, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California, USA kenneth.kendler@vcuhealth.org.
authors.forename: Kenneth S
authors.initials: KS
authors.lastname: Kendler
authors.affiliation: Kenneth S. Kendler, MD, Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics, Department of Psychiatry and Department of Human and Molecular Genetics, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia, USA; Nancy A. Morris, PhD, Department of Criminal Justice, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia, USA; Henrik Ohlsson, PhD, Sara Larsson Lönn, PhD, Center for Primary Health Care Research, Lund University, Malmö, Sweden; Jan Sundquist, MD, PhD, Kristina Sundquist, MD, PhD, Center for Primary Health Care Research, Lund University, Malmö, Sweden and Stanford Prevention Research Center, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California, USA.
authors.forename: Nancy A
authors.initials: NA
authors.lastname: Morris
authors.affiliation: Kenneth S. Kendler, MD, Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics, Department of Psychiatry and Department of Human and Molecular Genetics, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia, USA; Nancy A. Morris, PhD, Department of Criminal Justice, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia, USA; Henrik Ohlsson, PhD, Sara Larsson Lönn, PhD, Center for Primary Health Care Research, Lund University, Malmö, Sweden; Jan Sundquist, MD, PhD, Kristina Sundquist, MD, PhD, Center for Primary Health Care Research, Lund University, Malmö, Sweden and Stanford Prevention Research Center, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California, USA.
authors.forename: Henrik
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Ohlsson
authors.affiliation: Kenneth S. Kendler, MD, Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics, Department of Psychiatry and Department of Human and Molecular Genetics, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia, USA; Nancy A. Morris, PhD, Department of Criminal Justice, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia, USA; Henrik Ohlsson, PhD, Sara Larsson Lönn, PhD, Center for Primary Health Care Research, Lund University, Malmö, Sweden; Jan Sundquist, MD, PhD, Kristina Sundquist, MD, PhD, Center for Primary Health Care Research, Lund University, Malmö, Sweden and Stanford Prevention Research Center, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California, USA.
authors.forename: Sara Larsson
authors.initials: SL
authors.lastname: Lönn
authors.affiliation: Kenneth S. Kendler, MD, Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics, Department of Psychiatry and Department of Human and Molecular Genetics, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia, USA; Nancy A. Morris, PhD, Department of Criminal Justice, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia, USA; Henrik Ohlsson, PhD, Sara Larsson Lönn, PhD, Center for Primary Health Care Research, Lund University, Malmö, Sweden; Jan Sundquist, MD, PhD, Kristina Sundquist, MD, PhD, Center for Primary Health Care Research, Lund University, Malmö, Sweden and Stanford Prevention Research Center, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California, USA.
authors.forename: Jan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Sundquist
authors.affiliation: Kenneth S. Kendler, MD, Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics, Department of Psychiatry and Department of Human and Molecular Genetics, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia, USA; Nancy A. Morris, PhD, Department of Criminal Justice, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia, USA; Henrik Ohlsson, PhD, Sara Larsson Lönn, PhD, Center for Primary Health Care Research, Lund University, Malmö, Sweden; Jan Sundquist, MD, PhD, Kristina Sundquist, MD, PhD, Center for Primary Health Care Research, Lund University, Malmö, Sweden and Stanford Prevention Research Center, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California, USA.
authors.forename: Kristina
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Sundquist
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000300:Adoption; D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D002668:Child Rearing; D003415:Crime / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D057237:Criminals / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D005190:Family; D006801:Humans; D007604:Juvenile Delinquency / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D008875:Middle Aged; D012042:Registries / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D035781:Siblings; D013548:Sweden / Q000453:epidemiology; D055815:Young Adult