The Problem of Family and Juvenile Crime

Abstract

Crime is a social phenomenon. Nobody is born with criminal motivation and behavior. It is gradually shaped under social influence and by modeling oneself after others. Society exerts its influence on a person through many channels, one of them being the family. Half of one's life is spent in the family. From the day of one's birth and the beginning when one learns to speak, walk, and other movements, one's parents, siblings, and other elders in the family are one's earliest teachers. It is through parents and other family members that ideas, moral concepts, and other knowledge in society are transmitted to the children, affecting their later thinking and behavior. In this sense, a family is one's first school and parents the earliest teachers. The various ideologies in society more or less find their expression in different families. Therefore family plays an important role in one's life. Generally speaking, a good family environment is capable of nurturing talents useful to society, while a bad family background may breed people who are harmful to society. In view of this, we cannot but emphasize the family factor in our study of the causes and conditions of crimes.