Personality Characteristics Of Young Offenders In Custody And Parental Rearing

This paper basing on reviewing the literatures of personality studies about adolescent criminals' in or out of the country, applying EPQ and parental rearing patterns inventory(EMBU), explored four kinds of adolescent criminals' personality characteristics and the relationship between their personality characteristics and their parental rearing patterns. The results shown:First, contrasting to the norm and the comparison group, adolescent criminals' personality characteristics were higher P, higher E and lower L. They were lonely, uncare of others, difficult to adapt to exterior environment, unkind, difficult to get along with others, liking to make troubles. They also had the following personality characteristics, such as extroversion, loving adventure and stimulating, unstable emotion, impulsion, intense emotion responses, even un-intellect behavior, low self-control ability, puerility and infantility, not good at hiding and pretending himself and lack of self-protect and so on.Second, there was difference on the personality characteristics between different kind of adolescent criminals. There were higher N, higher P, higher L with drug criminals and higher E, lower L with violence criminals but lower P, lower E and lower N with robbery criminals and lower E, lower N and higher L with rape criminals.Third, comparing to the comparison group, parental rearing patterns of adolescent criminals had the characters such as lower emotion warm or understanding, higher punishment, higher intervention and so on.Four, there were significant difference among parental rearing patterns of different kind of adolescent criminal. The parental rearing patterns of violence criminals, robbery criminals and rape criminals were shown as conflict rearing characteristics, such as 'punishment and severeness of father', 'excess protect of father' and 'punishment and severeness of mother' etc. But there was no significant difference between drug criminals and comparision group.Five, there was significant correlation between 'father's sensibility warm and understanding', 'father's punishment and severeness', 'father's refusal and denying', 'mother's sensibility warm and understanding', 'mother's punishment and severeness' and P. There was significant negative correlation between 'mother's intervention and protection' and N or L. Additionally the parental rearing patterns of drug criminals was predictive to their personality characteristics.