Relation of Crime and Family

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...

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...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).