Relationship Between Family Socio Economic Status and Juvenile Delinquency in Bungoma County

Abstract

The study sought to determine how the socio economic status of a family relates to children participating in crime in Bungoma County. It was mainly centered to examine how the socio economic status of a family relates to children participating in crime; to investigate how the socio economic status of a family relates to alcohol and drug abuse among children; To evaluate how family socio economic status relates to antisocial behavior among children, and finally to assess how the socio economic status of a family relates to petty offences among children. The area of study was Bungoma County and the research design that was used by the researcher was descriptive. This design was adopted for this study because it involves extensively analyzing and describing the relationship between family socio economic status and children participating in crime. The target population for the study was juvenile delinquents in both correctional institutions and non-institutionalized. A sample of approximately 83 juvenile delinquents from institutionalized and approximately 100 juvenile delinquents from non-institutionalized was selected. Data collection involved administration of questionnaires to the sampled juvenile delinquents. Data was cleaned and edited to eliminate errors and omissions then coded to assign numbers to responses. Responses were arranged against each research question. Both descriptive as well as inferential statistics was analyzed. Descriptive statistics such as the measures of central tendencies was used to summarize the data and to describe the distribution of the sample. Similarly the inferential statistics such Chi-Square, Pearson’s correlation, multiple regression as well as ANOVA was used to infer the sample results to the population. The findings indicate that most of the juveniles came from the low class family socio economic status and therefore as the family social economic status increases, there is a decrease in crime and violence and petty offences but an increase in antisocial behavior and alcohol and drug abuse in Bungoma County. The recommendation is the relevant authorities to introduce interventions to empower community so as to increase socio- economic status.