At the cross roads: family, youth deviance and crime control in Botswana

Abstract

Since the 1980s, some major villages in Botswana have experienced an increase in deviance and crime among youth. This deviance is often manifested in an escalation of criminal gangs that are mostly male in composition. The intense search for the causes of this problem by traditional and modern custodians of law often blame parents' inability to control and guide their children. This paper explores some of the difficulties of regarding the family as either the cause or the potential solution to the problem of youth deviance and crime. Blaming families fails to take into account the effects of societal changes that undermine the effectiveness of the family as an agent of social control. Drawing on existing literature, this paper concludes that it is no longer useful to assume the centrality of the family in combating youth crime. Poverty, unemployment, changes in marriage patterns and divorce must also be taken into account, as all of these have serious implications on the structure and agency of the family. This calls for a baseline study on the family to put the fundamental issues of its structure and agency into proper socio-economic and cultural perspective.