Disrupted Families

David Farrington proposed an upbringing theory of why some people turn to crime by explaining the role of "disrupted families". 

He explains that essentially, socialisation in a family that has been significantly disrupted in some way, due to occurrences such as long-term unemployment, divorce, imprisonment or parental death, can lead somebody to commit crimes. In other words, he believes that "problem families" create "problem children". 

Furthermore he proposed that criminality was an aspect of a large anti-social behaviour syndrome, which is also the result of upbringing in a disrupted family. 

Study: Juby and Farrington 

Juby and Farrington conducted a longitudinal study on 411 boys from South London from the age of 8 to 46. It used a variety of research methods, including interviews, questionnaires, government and criminal records - measures were taken at various intervals. 

On their fifteenth birthdays, boys from disrupted families had committed considerably more crimes than those who were from intact families (29% to 18%). Boys from high conflict intact families had similar delinquency rates to those from disrupted families, whilst boys who lived solely with their mothers had similar rates to those in intact families. Other notable findings included that parental disharmony (i.e. absence due to divorce) was more of an indicator of delinquency than parental death and boys who'd lost their mother were more likely to offend than those who'd lost their father. 

Evaluation issues: reductionist theory, situational approach, nurture explanation, deterministic, doesn't account for why most boys in disrupted families didn't offend, useful as it suggests individuals who are more prone to offend