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Violenţa familială – factor de risc în delincvenţa juvenilă
Domestic violence – a risk factor in juvenile delinquency

Author(s): Maria Marinela Sandu
Subject(s): Social Sciences
Published by: Editura Lumen, Asociatia Lumen
Keywords: human aggressiveness; family violence; child abuse; child victimization; delinquency risk factors;

Summary/Abstract: In contemporary society, violence has become a daily constant implicit to the phenomenon of criminality, the gravity of the matter being referred to in recent studies and reports of specialists in the field. It is of growing concern that violence with its forms of manifestation has invaded the family environment, giving rise to the phenomenon of domestic violence that affects all family members from children to seniors. This study aims at highlighting the co-ocurrent relationship between domestic violence and child abuse, thus defining family violence, which, in certain situations and contexts, may constitute a criminogenic risk factor in general or a delinquency risk factor for minors. Consequently, a positive family environment associates with factors protective from or inhibitive of delinquent behaviour amongst minors, while a negative family environment, in particular a conflictual one, may associate, in certain conditions, with precipitating factors or delinquency risk factors for minors. The argument of this study is based on the theories of socialization and social control, showing that family violence contributes to the deterioration of the family educational climate, which clearly deviates from fulfilling its socialization-education and social control functions. Paradoxically, the family environment is a security space characterized by profound affective relations, while being, at the same time, “the most active centre of aggressiveness”. As shown in recent studies, the family occupies a top position in what concerns child victimization and revictimization.

  • Issue Year: 2008
  • Issue No: 23
  • Page Range: 63-82
  • Page Count: 20
  • Language: Romanian