Abstract
The family is an entity that falls under the privacy of everyone. Therefore, understanding the intrusion of a repressive law within it is not something obvious. Yet it is clear that penal activity has increased in the family those past years.Then the question is what are the reasons that justify the intervention of penal law within the family. This problem leads us to question the place of criminal law in the family. This study highlights two conditions for the intervention of penal law: the existence of a malfunction in the family, an indispensable condition; the protection of social values within the family, a necessary condition.First, it is therefore necessary to build the concept of family dysfunction on three criteria which are the nature of the malfunction, the severity of this dysfunction and finally the moment of its appearance.Second, with regard to the protection of social values in the family, two modalities of intervention are dissociated: a classic mode that penal law is essentially an accessory law and an innovative modality that penal law asserts its singularity.