NCJ Number
72497
Journal
Indian Journal of Criminology Volume: 8 Issue: 2 Dated: (July 1980) Pages: 94-99
Date Published
1980
Length
6 pages
Annotation
In view of the existing literature on the personality of male criminals, this Indian study proposed that female criminals would have higher scores on psychoticism, extroversion, and neuroticism (PEN) than female noncriminals.
Abstract
Of 200 female subjects selected for the study, 100 were drawn from Indian women's jails in three Indian cities, and the other 100 were drawn from Chandigarh City; the two samples were matched socioeconomically, educationally, and by age. Eysenck's PEN inventory was used to test the subjects. The inventory predicts that extroverts, particulary with high N (neuroticism) scores will be more likely than introverts to commit criminal and antisocial acts. Moreover, the most difficult and incurable criminals seem to score high on P, or psychoticism implying solitariness, cruelty, insensitivity, aggressive liking of odd or unusual things.) The results from the sample of 200 women were also compared with the scores of male prisoners obtained in an earlier study. Results showed female criminals scoring significantly higher on both P and N than both the female noncriminals and the male criminals. However, on E (extroversion), the score differentials between female criminals and noncriminals were not significant. Burgess' quadrant test and h-score were applied, with the hyothesis that prisoners should score highly when E and N are combined. In this test, female criminals fall most frequently in the most crucial high N and high E quadrant. Overall, the female criminals showed strikingly similar scores as compared to the male criminals, indicating that female criminals do not differ from their male counterparts on personality scores. Several tables and 17 differences are provided. (Author abstract modified)