Nature, Nurture, or Both? Using Sibling Comparisons to Examine Age of Exposure to Household Member Incarceration and Future Justice System Involvement

Evidence from a long line of research indicates that criminal justice system involvement concentrates within families. However, much remains unknown about whether the timing of exposure to household member incarceration is differentially associated with future system contact. One way to rigorously assess this possibility is to examine full sibling pairs who are discordant on age at first exposure to household member incarceration to control for unobservable familial confounds that cluster within families. This study aims to address this void by analyzing longitudinal sibling pair data from two population-based samples from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Results from a series of sibling comparison models reveal mixed findings for the association between age at first exposure to family member incarceration and justice system involvement. The implications for the effect of age at first exposure to family member criminal justice system involvement, criminological theory, and prevention/intervention programming are discussed.