Discriminative Factor Analysis of Delinquent Behavior in Korea / 신경정신의학

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVES: The present study was intended to analyse discriminative factors between student adolescents and delinquent adolescents in Korea, and to develop therapeutic and preventive strategies for preventing juvenile delinquent behavior. METHODS: The research design of this study was a questionnaire survey with individual interviews and reference of the record materials of the school and corrective institutions. Subjects served for this study consisted of 2,375 adolescents(1,254 student adolescents and 1,121 delinquent adolescents) in Korea, sampled from Korean student population and adolescent delinquent population confined in 6 juvenile corrective institutions and 2 classification judging institutions, using the proportional stratified random sampling method. Their age range was between 12 and 21. The actual number of cases put into the analyses was 2,167 including 1,196 student adolescents and 971 delinquent adolescents. Data were analysed by the SAS program. Statistical methods employed were Chi-square, t-test, and logistic regression analysis etc. RESULTS: The discriminative factors between student adolescents and delinquent adolescents were smoking, alcohol use, drug use, viewing time of media violence such as murder and violence scenes on TV etc, sexual abuse and viewing time of pornography. Among these discriminative factors, the strongest factor was smoking. Delinquent adolescents showed a higher rate of smoking than student adolescents. That is, smoking adolescents showed 32.32 of odds ratio comparing with the non-smoking adolescents group. The other discriminative factors were alcohol use(10.38 of odds ratio), drug use(2.95 of odds ratio), viewing time of violent media(1.78 of odds ratio), sexual abuse(1.68 of odds ratio) and viewing time of pornography(1.25 of odds ratio). CONCLUSIONS: In conclusion, it was found that smoking served as the strongest discriminative factor between student adolescents and delinquent adolescents. That is, smoking adolescents showed a higher frequency of delinquent behavior than non-smoking adolescents. However, the author recommended that a strong, reliable correlation between smoking and juvenile crime is probably not a simple causal one. Rather, a complex relationship between smoking and juvenile criminal behavior results from the probable effects of multiple interactive physiological, psychological, environmental, situational, social and cultural factors.