Farrington shows many different aspects of family life and how they affect the probability of a child becoming involved in the system. He first talks about crime “ruining families”, saying that 63% of boys with convicted father were themselves convicted. He also looks at the relationship between other family members. He notes that besides the father the largest predator to criminal activity is the older sibling. Variables he gives for delinquency are family crime history, size of family, child abuse and neglect and disrupted families. Although Farrington does not speak directly to alcoholism, much of his research shows that acts, especially criminal, done by the parents cause a negative effect onto the children in the household, thus supporting both differential association theory as well as labeling …show more content…
The independent variables being looked at are, was one or both parents/ guardians alcoholic, seriousness of parental alcoholism, first experiences with alcohol, family income as a child, age of first getting into the criminal justice system and gender. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, NIAAA, a person can be considered an alcoholic if he/she drinks at least five or more drinks on the same occasion on each of five or more days in the past thirty days for men and for women four or more drinks on the same occasion on each of five or more days in the past thirty days therefore this will be our measure for alcoholism of both the parent and the child in the criminal justice system. Number of drinks per day/month would be ratio data. This is a key variable because defining what alcoholism is and who had an alcoholic parent is the main bassist for this study. Seriousness of alcoholism pertains to a ranking of severity of the acts the person would do well under the influence of alcohol. Things such as sleep for long periods, drive, yell, and become physical would all fall under this. Because this is a ranking it would be an ordinal variable. This variable would show the different extents of alcoholism in a house hold and this information may separate different types of