Children and Crime in India by Saju Parackal & Rita Panicker

Author:Saju Parackal & Rita Panicker
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030165895
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

The unravelling of Abhilash’s life validates the sociological theories which hold that delinquency (and criminality) is behaviour learned and acquired through interaction with others who participate in criminal lifestyles, implying that the difference between offenders and non-offenders lies in their individual choices. Conversely, the biological theory on hereditary holds that criminality in some families is genetically encoded in those born into a family group, given that a ‘gene’ is theoretically inherited and passed from generation to generation (West & Farrington, 1977). Mutual influences of family members on one another is premised hence as a predictor for adolescent deviance, although a 100% correlation between heredity and offence has not been identified for deviance. Adolescent male siblings tend to imitate the anti-social behaviour of older male siblings, or perhaps older siblings encourage younger ones to be anti-social. However, the effect of a criminal parent on a child’s offending behaviour is mediated by environmental mechanisms. The Pittsburgh and Cambridge longitudinal studies show that the criminality of the father, mother, brother or sister is a good predictor of delinquency in boys. The most important factor remains the criminality of the father: 63% of boys with a father involved in criminal activity are at risk themselves of being involved in such activity. Many other studies have also found that parental criminality increases the risk for violent offences among children and adolescents (Baker & Mednick, 1984). Sampson and Laub (1993) found that parental deviance leads to children having deviant peers. It has also been demonstrated that the youth of anti-social parents are at a greater risk of violence or delinquency than the adolescent with the least anti-social parents (Eddy & Reid, 2002). Studies also prove that parental substance use (drug, alcohol, cigarettes, etc.) results in a host of behavioural, social, cognitive and self-esteem problems in their offspring, particularly adolescents (Kandel, Rosenbaum, & Chen, 1994). It is evident from the above case that parental deviance does have an influence on the lives of children. They imitate and imbibe the values and norms which they observe in those close to them. Although an intergenerational association/influence of deviance between Abhilash and his father could be observed through their engagement with offences, it would be premature to speak about it as an invariable cause since not all children who have a deviant parent resort to such acts. Instead many children may purposefully shed the path of deviance and lead a law-abiding life.

The strength of the intergenerational transmission of offending in the current study was weak, however, as only 96 (15.9%) of 605 children in detention centres with a higher representation from Tamil Nadu (25.7%), followed by Delhi (9.3%), reported to have a family member involved in offences. Most of the children who affirmed in this regard were involved in property cases. Among those children involved in offences of rape and murder, 8.2% and 11.7%, respectively, reported about generational transmission, i.e., the involvement of one or other family member in an offence. Similarly, a higher number of children from special homes (22.

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