Sir. On January 23rd The Irish Times published an article on the roots of crime and set out the risk factors for would be criminals. Three of those risk factors were low income, large family and inadequate parenting. Further, the expert who compiled the list of risk factors claimed that just one of these factors doubled the chances of an eight year old becoming a juvenile delinquent and that a combination of any two gave him a high chance of becoming a chronic adult offender.
What is one to make of this in a country where up until recently two of those three factors i.e., low income and large family, applied to most families? You might adds that as a consequence of those two factors, there was a great deal of the third i.e., inadequate parenting.
As is evident from the current photographic exhibition in The Ark, as late as the 1950s many. children went to school without shoes. Was this adequate parenting? How does Sean O'Casey's Dublin, where most large families occupied one tenement room, square with this yardstick?
It's high time there was some sensible discussion about the ways to prevent and combat crime, including the ways in which contemporary society with its culture of greed (the lotto mentality and big business fraud) and the exposure of the very young to mindless, brutal television and videos, may be contributing to its worst ills. - Yours, etc.,
Ballsbridge,
Dublin 4.