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.