Relation of Crime and Family Essays -- Sociology Essays Papers Crimina

Crime is sometimes blamed on the family, with poor parenting, lack of discipline and family breakdown often associated with youth crime. A recurrent theme in academic research has been to investigate the relationship between delinquency and a range of family related factors. Early studies explored child-rearing behaviour, parental discipline, the criminal histories of parents and family size and income. Popular theories in the 1950s and 1960s related juvenile delinquency to material deprivation, broken homes and to the growing number of ‘latch key’ children who were left unsupervised after school while their mothers went to work. All of these presaged current concerns with discipline and the role of single-parent families. What has emerged from this research is that some family factors are related to the likelihood of delinquency but that they must be considered in the context of the socio-economic circumstances of the family and the others factors such as school and the peer group. The following factors have emerged as particularly important. Parental discipline and supervision Parental discipline has always been seen as a major factor underlying youth crime and it was found that inconsistent and erratic discipline are more likely to be associated with delinquency than lax or strict discipline (West and Farrington 1973, 1977). More recent studies have focused on the quality of parental supervision, often measured by whether parents know where their children are when they are not at home. A Home Office study in 1995, for example, found that supervision was strongly related to offending with higher numbers of those who were no... ...ng number of people who are able to work but choose not to, live in a ‘different world’ from others. They do not obtain good habits and discipline and their values contaminate ‘the life of entire neighbourhoods’ (Murray 1996:p123). Men in such communities cannot support families, leading to high rates of illegitimacy, and seek alternative, destructive means of proving that they are men. Whole communities are devastated by crime and young men look up to criminal role models. Whether or not the underclass exists, most agree that industrial restructuring has led to the growth of communities within which the majority of inhabitants are excluded from work and its associated benefits, and that these are also characterised by high amounts of property crime, youth crime and illegal drug use (Davies, Croall & Tyrer 1999).