The Impact of Family Structure on Juvenile Delinquency: (A Case Study of Male Inmates at a Juvenile Detention Center and Male High School Students in Shiraz) Mansourabadi Abbas*, Mirkhalili Sayyed Mahmoud*, Farokhiani Karim** *Faculty of Law, Qom College, University of Tehran, Iran **Judge at Criminal court Online published on 11 June, 2014. Abstract The effect of family and its structure on delinquency, in particular juvenile delinquency, has been the object of a wealth of notable research, all of which suggest that family is by far the most important factor in individuals’ law abiding behavior and delinquency in a society. Surveying two samples i.e. juvenile delinquents and well-behaved minors in Shiraz, the present study examined this very issue and yielded results supporting, to a great extent, those obtained by previous research. In this study, 19 independent variables as the family structure variables influencing youth crime were tested using a questionnaire. The research hypothesis holds that these variables are significantly correlated to juvenile offending. The results indicated that, on the one hand, there is a significant relationship between delinquency among the samples and variables including place of birth, disability, adherence to religious values, parental monitoring, maternal employment, home ownership, family breakdown, and drug and alcohol abuse among family members, which supported the hypotheses. On the other hand, delinquency, the results suggested, is not significantly related to variables including household income, paternal employment, satisfying economic needs, parental education, family intimacy, stuttering, family dysfunction, and contact with friends, rejecting the corresponding hypotheses. Top Keywords Offence, deviation, abnormality, monitoring, social control. Top |