ABSTRACT
The family is society's foundational institution and is literally the nursery of human nature. Infants arrive in this world with the biological potential to be human beings, but it is the family that first takes hold of their potential and begins the process of actualizing it. The importance of the family was starkly in evidence when in 1928 the Soviet Union tried to destroy it, viewing it as a "bourgeois" institution of oppression. A theory of criminal behavior with a strong emphasis on the family that has long been preeminent in criminology is Travis Hirschi's social bond theory. The scariest criminals go by such names as psychopath and sociopath. The most evil of all criminals are serial killers whether they kill millions in state-sponsored bloodbaths or kill a single person at a time. While it is true that most criminals have grown up in conditions of financial and moral poverty, their real deprivation is of love.
