How do you handle criminal family members?

By not talking to them.

Have an uncle that has hit my grandma on more than one occasion and has done a few other shitty things. Maybe not criminal as much as abusive, but he has been in jail.

I do not communicate with him nor want to.

I can understand why my Grandma gave him so many chances. Its harder when its a kid you raised.

@Sergeant What a jerk. Hits his mom? Grrr.

Depending on the crime, I would turn them in.
They could potentially be a risk to others….

Life, is full of tough decisions.

Sometimes, you have to think about others.
Sometimes, the ramifications, can put the person on a better path…..

Depends on how profitable his unsanctioned endeavour is.

I know someone whose son murdered his wife and kids, and then himself. He sees it as a tragedy that befell the whole family, like they all died in an airplane crash or something.

That isn’t reasonable, but I can’t begin to imagine standing in his shoes. I am painfully sorry he lost them all. How he deals with it is his struggle. He is not to blame. I give him all possible leeway .

A good friend from high school told me that her eldest brother was arrested and put in jail for watching child porn. Oddly, the guy who posted it got less time in jail than my friend’s brother due to living in a different city. The hard part for her was she was a police officer, as was her partner.

The friend hasn’t given up on her brother. He is out of jail now, and they have gotten together.

Persona non grata as far as I’m concerned.

My grandfather was a bookie. My uncle was a heroin addict who was in and out of jail and rehab. I had a younger cousin killed by police years ago and my godson just got out of jail a few months ago for reckless endangerment. Even my dad ended up on probation.

These are all among a larger family peppered with alcoholics, drug addicts, and some serious mental illness.

Overall, they were alternately enabled, cajoled, yelled at, but never given up on. It was not easy on my grandmother and others.

I should point out that criminal alone isn’t enough for me to cut someone off. My own father has a felony conviction for selling marijuana.

On the other hand – my mother’s brother is, as far as I’m concerned, an absolute shitbag. A user, an abuser, a crackhead and petty thief who will not stay out of jail for longer than a few months and will not even attempt a sincere effort at cleaning himself up or supporting himself. Instead he relies on the sympathies of relatives, who go for it every time because “you don’t turn your back on family”, and steals when he can’t squeeze a few bucks out of this one or that one. He is nothing to me.

@cookieman . I had an uncle, who killed himself. He was only 35.
He was addicted to crack.

His suicide note , was terrible.
He couldn’t stop robbing from his mother. He split his wrist, in a halfway house . He had an infant son…
He just couldn’t get away, from his problems…...