To what extent do parents have an influence over their children becoming delinquent?

There have been an increasing number of stories in the media regarding children and their increasing tendencies to crime. High profile crimes such as the Jamie Bulgar murder and shootings in universities across America have sparked a high level of controversy and research into what actually makes a child delinquent. There have been a number of factors which have been associated with child delinquency such as the individual child, peers, school, neighbourhood, the media and one which has received a huge amount of attention is parents and family. This essay will be looking at the extent to which parents have an influence over there children becoming delinquent.

It will explain reasons and ways in which parents influence there children into delinquency through lack of for example discipline, and a variety of other factors. It will then go on to examine other factors such as the individual, peers and school, which may contribute to a child taking the path of crime and will evaluate how much influence this has on a child.

The US dept of justice created the office of juvenile justice and delinquency prevention (OJJDP) which formed a study group on very young offenders to examine the prevalence and frequency of offending in children under the age of 13. This study group identified a number of risk and protective factors which were crucial in developing early intervention and protection programs for very young offenders. It found that some aspects of children’s behaviour such as temperament are established during the first five years of life. This foundation coupled with children’s exposure to certain risk and protective factors, influences the likelihood of children becoming delinquent from an early age. Risk factors are things which are most likely to pull a child into a life of crime. There are three types of risk factors; static, dynamic and protective. Static risk factors are those which are historical and cannot be changed such as age at first offence and prior criminal history. Dynamic risk factors are those which are changeable these are things such as substance and alcohol abuse.

Lastly protective factors are those which mediate and moderate the effect of exposure to risk factors. This is usually done by reducing the risk of exposure to crime, reducing negative chain reactions which means to deal with a delinquency problem identified in children from an early age rather than letting it spiral out of control. Another protective factor which should be instilled in children is establishing self esteem and self efficacy this in addition to opening up opportunities to them will reduce the calling of crime as they will have other things to keep them occupied and realise there are a number of things which they can do t broaden there horizons. However the identification of these risk factors have been difficult to pinpoint but it remains imperative to distinguish as these factors are essential to developing interventions to prevent child delinquency from escalating into chronic criminality. There area number of studies which were done in both the UK and the US to identify risk factors which are associated with a child turning to crime.

The Cambridge Study of Delinquency was a longitudinal survey of the development of offending and antisocial behaviour in 411 males first studied at age 8 in 1961 – at that time they were all living in a working-class deprived inner-city area of South London. It found eight different factors which contributed to children turning delinquent these were; low income family, large family, poor parenting, below average intelligence, parent with criminal record, impulsivity, antisocial behaviour, socio-econo