 Blockinchapter Blockinobjectives

When people are asked what they think are the main causes of crime, they often nominate poor parental child-rearing methods, and especially poor discipline or control of children (see Farrington, 2002). For example, in 1988, the British newspaper Mail on Sunday reported the results of a survey of a quota sample of over 1,000 adults who were asked what they thought were the main causes of violent crime. The most popular cause (nominated by 53 percent) was lack of parental discipline, followed by poverty (20 percent), television violence (19 percent), lack of school discipline (15 percent), broken homes (13 percent), and alcohol or drugs (13 percent). Academic research confirms the importance of family factors as predictors of offending. Smith and Stern (1997, pp. 383 –384) concluded in their review that: