The purpose of the present study was to elucidate the psychosocial characteristics of juvenile offenders indexed by the Personality Assessment Inventory(PAI) and Risk Assessment Tool(RAT). Experiment group were recruited from juvenile offenders under ...
The purpose of the present study was to elucidate the psychosocial characteristics of juvenile offenders indexed by the Personality Assessment Inventory(PAI) and Risk Assessment Tool(RAT). Experiment group were recruited from juvenile offenders under police investigation, ages 12-19 (n=202). Number of age matched normal control group was 65. All participants lived at Gyeongnam and Jeonnam regions.
PAI's scales and RAT's factors in the control group were compared with those in the experimental group, and PAI's scales were clustered to create an offender typology of the juvenile offenders.
The scales of inconsistency(ICN), infrequency(INF), somatic complaints(SOM), depression(DEP), borderline features(BOR), antisocial features(ANT), alcohol problems(ALC), aggression(AGG), stress(STR) in the experimental group were significantly higher than those in the control group. Also the sub-scales of health concerns(SOM-H), affective anxiety(ANX-A), cognitive depression(DEP-C), physiological depression(DEP-P), activity level(MAN-A), persecution(PAR-P), affective instability(BOR-A), self-harm(BOR-S), antisocial behaviors(ANT-A), egocentricity(ANT-E), stimulus-seeking(ANT-S), aggressive attitude(AGG-A), verbal aggression(AGG-V), physical aggression(AGG-P) in the experimental group were significantly higher than those in the control group. All of the six scores of Risk Assessment Tool in the experimental group were significantly higher than those in the control group.
Further, the data revealed that the offender characteristics of the experimental group were sub-divided by their personality patterns: cluster 1 was a mild antisocial and aggressive group who had mania features and rich interpersonal relationship, cluster 2 was an highly antisocial and aggressive group who had depression and borderline features, cluster 3 was a normal antisocial and mild aggressive group who had mild depression and poor interpersonal relationship, cluster 4 was a normal group.
The predicted factors of delinquency act based on 10 PAI scales were high antisocial(ANT), alcohol problems(ALC), depression(DEP) and low anxiety(ANX). The equation of regression was as follows.
delinquency act(Y) = ‒12.845***+ 0.187***(ANT) + 0.110**(ALC)
+ 0.170***(DEP) ‒ 0.111**(ANX)
Implications, limitations of the present study and suggestions for the further investigation were also discussed.