Mother of teenager convicted of Iitti murder sentenced for serious offences
Päijät-Häme District Court sentenced a 17-year-old boy to ten years in prison for a murder in Iitti. Yle News investigated the boy's family background: his mother has been convicted of multiple serious offences.
Teenager convicted of murder grew up in the shadow of criminal convictions
Päijät-Häme District Court on Tuesday sentenced a 17-year-old boy to ten years in prison for the murder of a fifty-year-old man, which he committed at the age of 15 in Iitti. The verdict is not yet final, and the boy has indicated his dissatisfaction with it.
Yle News investigated the convicted young man's family background, because a murder committed by a 15-year-old is rare in Finland and because the boy's mother has an extensive criminal history. According to Yle, the boy was registered at the same address as his mother in Iitti at the time of the crime. Police found him hiding in premises rented by his mother in Lahti.
Yle does not publish the boy's name because he is a minor.
Mother detained for serious offences
The boy's mother is currently in detention. In March, Päijät-Häme District Court sentenced the 43-year-old woman to over five years in prison for aggravated money laundering, aggravated drug offences and aggravated firearms offences. The verdict has been forwarded to the appellate court for determination.
Contact between the mother and boy was restricted during the murder investigation.
In a pre-investigation recording obtained by Yle, the mother describes having considered framing her son for a drug offence. On the same recording, she describes her son as warm-hearted and wonders how he will manage in isolation.
The mother has been convicted of crimes before. In 2023, she received a final conviction for unlawful deprivation of liberty. At the time of the district court verdict, the woman already had a conviction for aggravated robbery, aggravated assault and drug offences — which had occurred when the boy was ten years old. The boy's father also has a minor criminal history.
Criminologist: risk doubles for children of parents with criminal records
Helsinki University professor of criminology Antti Latvala commented to Yle News on research evidence regarding the intergenerational transmission of criminality at a general level.
According to Latvala, children whose parents have a criminal background have a doubled risk of becoming offenders themselves compared to children whose parents have no criminal history.
"Children do worse than the comparison population on average in many areas of life. There are differences in mental health disorders, substance abuse problems and educational level," Latvala says.
The professor emphasises that research findings do not demonstrate a direct causal relationship in any individual young person's case. Not all children of criminals become offenders.
According to Latvala, the inheritance of criminality is explained by both the growing environment and genetic factors.
"It is possible that hereditary factors are also involved. Criminal behaviour involves a genetic component, as does all behaviour. A child can inherit risk genes from their parents."
Children of parents with criminal backgrounds also have a greater risk of becoming victims of crime — including violence committed by their own parents.
Latvala highlights the particular significance of maternal criminality: because the mother is more often present in the child's everyday life, her criminal background may have a stronger connection to the child's later criminal behaviour than that of the father.
The matter is further complicated by so-called assortative mating: if the mother has a criminal background, the father is also more likely to have a criminal history.
"In other words, the child receives possible genetic risk from both parents to become an offender themselves. Additionally, the child is exposed to criminal life within the family," Latvala says.
Source: Yle Uutiset