Study on the personality disorder of violent female offenders

Jianmei CHEN; Li KUANG

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND:

Personality obstacle is a special type of psychopathy. Since it can reflect personal psychological traits, such as emotion, cognition, behavior mode and the ways one gets along with others, it may lead to meaningful functional impairments and psychological pains if they obviously deviate the normal range, resulting in functional malajustment to society, occupation, social ethics, rules and law. Therefore it deserves further investigation with respect to its criminological significance.

OBJECTIVE:

To investigate the influence of personality traits, age, educational degree, and marriage state before serving the sentence on criminal behavior of female offenders.

DESIGN:

A retrospective and control study based on patients.

SETTING:

Center of psychological sanitary in a hospital of a university.

PARTICIPANTS:

This study was carried out in the Psychological Sanitary Center of the First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical College between April 2004 and May 2004. Totally 223 female offenders who incarcerated in Chongqing Female prison were selected. Inclusion criteria All participants aged from 18 to 60 years old and received above elementary school education. Exclusion criteria Those who have definite body ailments or psychopaths. Finally totally 204 valid questionnaires were collected from female offenders who were then divided into violent criminal group( n = 120) and non-violent criminal group ( n = 84).

METHODS:

Totally 223 female offenders who incarcerated in Chongqing Female Prison were asked to fill personality diagnostic questionnaires (PDQ-R), Esonk' personality questionnaires(EPQ), and symptom self-rating chart(SCL-90). Finally totally 204 effective questionnaires were collected for statistical analysis with SAS software.MAIN OUTCOME

MEASURES:

Comparison of scores for three questionnaires between the two groups; relationship between general condition(age,educational degree and marriage state before incarceration) with the scores for the three questionnaires.

RESULTS:

The total score for PDQ-R was above 30 in both the two groups and without significant difference between them, ( P ＞ 0.05); the different results for EPQ between the two group was of statistical significance( P ＞ 0. 05); but the total scores for SCL-90 were markedly different between the two groups,( P ＜ 0.01 ); only "educational degree" was found positively correlated with "histrionic trait"; all items except "psychopathy" were close lined with the general state in EPQ questionnaires( P ＜ 0.05); "impulsion and the number of positive items" in SCL-90 were found related with the general condition( P＜ 0.05).

CONCLUSION:

All criminals have personality obstacle of different type and different degree, but the difference of personality traits between violent female offenders and non-violent female offenders was of no statistical significance.