CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the Study
From the creation of man, family has been the basic unit of social organization. It is a great circle where all moral of life is transmitted. Family remains the life wire of any society (Werwoc, 1974). The family can be described as the basic unit, since it embraces all forms of interaction between individuals. Apart from the importance of the family to themembers of the society, it serves as a semi-originator or controller of the existing institution the social system, because without people who make up the society, there will be no existing social institution. The family provides the individual with an identity, with a social and with economic well-being. The other institutions have only slowly emerged from the family and have for a long time been dependent on the family.
The family is universally regarded as the most sacred of the institutions and it is held so in the society. Similarly, Murdock (1949) postulated that such an institution isuniversity and functionally necessary because it performs those primary functions fundamental to human and social life. A family is defined as ‘two or more persons within a private or institutional household who are related as husband and wife, as cohabiting partners, or as parent and child (IJNECE, 2005:3). The term ‘family’ includes: a one-person household, that is, a persons who live alone in a separate housing unit alongside his wife and children. According to Wright and Wright (1994), the family is the foundation of human society. Children who are rejected by their parents, who grow up in homes with considerable conflictor who are inadequately supervised are at the greatest risk of becoming delinquent. Adolescence is a time of expanding vulnerabilities and opportunities that accompany the widening social and geographic exposure to life beyond school or family. Understanding the nature a relationships within the family, i.e. family adaptability, cohesion, and satisfaction, provides more information for understanding youth behavior (Cashwell&Vacc 1996).
Cohesiveness of the family successfully predicts the frequency of delinquent act as for non traditionalfamilies (Matherne& Thomas 2001). Family behaviors particularly parentalmonitoring and disciplining seem to influence association with deviant peers throughout the adolescent period (Cashwell&Vacc 1994). The structure of the family plays a large role in children’s experiences and the support they receive in the home.
The origin of juvenile delinquency in Nigeria dates back to the 1920s when youth crime such as pick pocketing and prostitution became predominant issues in Nigerian newspapers in that period. This ugly trend led to the establishment ofjudicial administrative process by the colonial administrators to deal with juvenile delinquents (Fourchard, 2006). It is appalling that the worrisome issue of juvenile delinquency still plagues the contemporary Nigerian society in a serious dimension (Muhammed, Salami ,Adekeye,Ayinla and Adeoye,2009). However, the problem of juvenile delinquency is not peculiar to Nigeria. In 2007, the law enforcement agencies in the United States of America reported 2.18 million of juveniles (Alfry, 2010). Alfry also reported that the United States Bureau of Justice Statistics found out that 72% of jailed juveniles came from fragmented families. According to World Youth Report cited in Sheryln (2008), the rate of criminal activity among juveniles in groups in the Russian Federation is about three to four times higher than that of adult offenders. Motivated by the increasing rate of juvenile delinquency in Britain,
July and Farrington (200 examined deviant behaviour and family disruption in a Longitudinal survey of South London males from age 8 to 46. The researchers found out that 29% of the boys from disrupted families were convicted as juveniles compared with 18% of the boy from stable families. The researchers concluded that family disruption was one of the contributory factors to the upsurge of juvenile delinquency in Britain. In Kenya, Muola,Ndugu andNgesa (2009) cited in Kimani (2010) in a study of the relationship between Family functions and deviant behaviour in Nakuru municipality in Kenya found out that the incidences of deviant behaviour have increased in recent years in Kenya. Deviant behaviour was found to be significantly related to family instability and mode of discipline. The researchers suggested that there was a relationship between family functions and deviant behaviour in Kenya. Fourchard (2006) has also decried the increasing trend of juvenile delinquency in South Africa, attributing the upsurge to familial factors amongst contributory variables. In view of the foregoing issues and trends globally and locally, many researchers agree that the foundation of juvenile delinquency is rooted in the kind of home the child is brought up (Okorodudu, 2010; Igbo, 2007). Muharnmed et at (2009) have observed that family instability is on the increase in Nigeria and that the increasing crime trends among tile youths may be attributed to this.
