NCJ Number
165357
Journal
Criminal Behaviour and Mental Health Volume: 6 Issue: 4 Dated: (1996) Pages: 339-348
Date Published
1996
Length
10 pages
Annotation
This study tested the hypothesis that young men incarcerated for murder would show more anger, hostility, and paranoid ideation, as well as increased levels of global psychopathology compared to a cohort of nonviolent offenders and normal high school students.
Abstract
Subjects (n=77) were males who ranged in age from 16 to 23 years. Data were collected in a group setting. One group (n=29) consisted of convicted first-degree and second-degree murderers. The other group was composed of nonviolent offenders (n=15), who were incarcerated because of repeated acquisitive crimes or violations of probation. The third group (n=33) consisted of juniors and seniors from a public high school in Stockton, Calif. Data were collected with a brief demographic questionnaire and three standardized psychometric measures, each of which has acceptable reliability and validity. The hypothesis was not supported by the data. Young murderers were indistinguishable from the two control groups on the instruments used. Moreover, they showed no evidence of increased anger, paranoid features, or global psychopathology relative to standardization samples. Rather than being differentiated by personality characteristics, the data suggest that a history of gang membership and violent behavior is a more reliable factor in discriminating between the violent and nonviolent groups. 1 table and 30 references