Parental Factor as a Leverage For Adolescents' Criminal Behaviour In South-West, Nigeria

The study investigated the extent to which parental factor act as a leverage for adolescents’ criminal behaviour in South-West, Nigeria. Parental factor includes Parenting styles, Parental criminality, Parent educational achievement, Family type,, Family conflict, and Family financial capability. The Ex-post facto research design was adopted for the study. The simple random as well as purposive sampling technique was used to select adolescents in Juvenile correctional centres and Medium correctional services across South-West Nigeria. A total of 240 participants took part in the study, while data was collected through the responses from the respondents to the Adolescents Criminal Exposure Behaviour Questionnaire (ACEBQ). The data collected was analyzed using the Univariate Analysis of variance [UNIANOVA] at 0.05 level of significance. A significant F- value ( F=4.551:P <0.0 5) The findings revealed that parental factor significantly disposed adolescents in Southwest Nigeria to criminal behaviours and exposure to correctional institutions. This study concluded that parents and guardians need to have firm grip on their wards, so as to prevent them from being negatively influenced by criminally inclined adolescents. The issue of family planning should also be taken seriously, if possible government should mandate couples not to have more than 2 children irrespective of their gender and teaching on dangers and consequences of divorce should be constituted into the counselling sessions for intending couples during their joining at the marriage registry. This is because it was revealed in the course of this research that majority of the adolescents inmates in the correctional institutions visited, were not from intact homes.