NCJ Number
79060
Journal
Social Defence Volume: 16 Issue: 61 Dated: (July 1980) Pages: 40-45
Date Published
1980
Length
6 pages
Annotation
Reported here is an Indian study of the phenomenon of delinquent behavior from the psychological viewpoints of adjustment and personality.
Abstract
The study group was a random sample of 80 male juvenile delinquents from an institution at Faridkot; the control group consisted of 80 nondelinquent males randomly selected from the local secondary school. The PEN test, measuring psychoticism (P), extraversion (E), and neuroticism (N), was used along with the adjustment inventory, which measures home, health, occupational, social, and emotional adjustment. Both tests were presented to subjects in a translated, Punjabi version. A comparison of the scores of nondelinquents with those of delinquents shows that the latter have poorer adjustment in all the areas, but the highest discrepancy is in the area of home and emotional adjustment. At the same time, delinquents scored high on all three dimensions of personality. Home, health, occupational, and social and emotional adjustment also showed high positive correlations among themselves as well as with total adjustment. The high delinquent scores in psychoticism agree with Eyseneck's theory implicating psychoticism in the causation of crime, as most of the items on psychoticism are saturated with processes closely related to criminal tendencies. Tabular data are given.