Criminal protection for families: a current challenge for the law (III).

Not all families are the same, because each one has its peculiarities, among other reasons, due to the number of members (small or large families), the way of family communication and the relationships among its members (respect, aggressiveness, affection), the economic, social and cultural level and the way in which the family participates as an essential nucleus in the life of the community.

These aspects make up the specific way of life of each family. Therefore, in the way they are conceived, they will provide its members with satisfaction and happiness. Modern life gives rise to tensions that are necessarily reflected in people’s lives. The development of children as happy, fulfilled persons cannot be achieved in an atmosphere of irritability, capriciousness, lack of intergenerational affection.

The parents, the grandparents, the head of the family, have the responsibility to control the negative manifestations until eliminating them for the irreversible damage that they cause in the education and formation of the values and the personality of their children, of their grandchildren, because these harmful expressions provoke in the new generations an aggressive conduct, characterized by the disposition to attack, to use at all times the violence against everything and against all, even against the environment.

The phenomenon of family violence is multi-causal and of very diverse types. Hence, the wide range of crimes and forms of violence can be associated with multiple explanations ranging from biological, psychogenetic, psychological, social, cultural and political.

Structural elements, such as income inequality, distortion of social values and risk factors, such as the carrying of weapons, habitual consumption of alcohol and drugs, and prostitution, among others, are also associated as causes.

It is valid to point out that given the multiple causes of violence, a variety of response actions are required, which imply, in turn, immediate actions to control and, if necessary, repress, without omitting medium and long-term actions aimed at finding the root of the problems. The problem requires the joint action of the different levels of the State and its institutions and of the civil society as a suitable platform to deploy these actions.

Osvaldo Manuel Álvarez Torres Consulting Professor University of Matanzas.