NCJ Number
80156
Journal
International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology Volume: 25 Issue: 2 Dated: (1981) Pages: 122-129
Date Published
1981
Length
8 pages
Annotation
This British study compares two groups of young males, aged 21 or under, to highlight differences between the 'normal' offender and the normal nonoffender, with emphasis on neuroticism as a factor in deviant behavior.
Abstract
The first group was composed of inmates with a history of delinquency. The second group was made up of army recruits. Common to both groups were age and sex; both groups wore uniforms, and lived in an all-male, authoritative regime. The project involved a correlation of the factual material gathered in interviews and a statistical interpretation of clinical evaluations. All the offenders were recidivists. Their intelligence was measured by means of the WAIS objective tests. Physically, both groups were healthy. Factors used to measure pertinent scores included both neurotic factors (moodiness, restlessness, paranoid feelings, poor concept of self) and social factors (parental deprivation, poverty of family environment, high incarceration index, member of multidelinquent family). Results indicate that the young offender sample shows a high involvement score for the neurotic factors. For the nonoffender group, the scores were much lower. The study concludes that the young recidivist is far more neurotically disturbed than his nonoffending counterpart. The degree of neuroticism is excessive in this offender group to the extent in can be termed pathological. Both the social and neurotic scores demonstrate the wide difference between the two groups. Implications of these findings are discussed. A total of 18 references are given.