In My Father’s House: A New View of How Crime Runs in the Family

I once asked a veteran kindergarten teacher if she could predict student success. She thought a minute and replied, “No, I can’t tell who is going to be successful, but I can tell you who is going to jail.” In My Father’s House is Fox Butterfield’s second book about crime families. It was shocking to learn half of all crimes in the U.S. are committed by five percent of families, and ten percent of American families commit two-thirds of all crime. Butterfield’s thesis is that just as doctor’s children might choose medicine, those raised by criminals may enter the family business.

This book focuses on the Bogle family. Initially, Butterfield was told that six members of the family were in prison; his exhaustive research uncovered that sixty members of the Bogle family had been in prison.

Butterfield lived in Asia for many years after majoring in Chinese studies at Harvard. Coming from a privileged family, he is hardly the candidate to study the roots of crime, yet that was his mission. His previous family crime book is All God’s Children about the Willie Basket family. It is interesting to read that crime is a family heritage, not a function of city life.