Browsing by Author "Lehtonen, Minna"

Study aims. Crime behaviour can be influenced by individual characteristics such as lack of impulse control or social factors such as loose social controls. What the main risk factors for crime are can vary between different contexts. The causes of crime can also differ in adolescence when many people experiment with crime as compared to in adulthood. The primary aim of this study was to compare the effects of family risk factors and personality on juvenile crime in Finland. The expectation was that in the individualistic Finnish context personality would have a larger impact on youth's crime behaviour than family risk factors. The second aim of the study was to assess whether the impact of family risk factors on delinquency was partially mediated by personality. Methods. The study data was from a Finnish cross-sectional self-report survey on youth crime collected in Spring 2012. The sample consisted of 4059 Year 6 students from 102 primary schools and 4855 Year 9 students from 51 secondary schools. Personality was measured using an abbreviated Finnish version of the original Big Five Inventory of personality (BFI-S). Delinquency was measured through self-reports of crimes committed in the previous year and included 12 varied offences including eg. graffiti, theft, burglary and battery. Family risk was assessed using a cumulative measure of five risk factors; parental unemployment, large family size, subjective ratings of poor financial situation, being from a divorced family and immigrant status. Results and discussion. After adjusting for gender and school year group both cumulative family risk and personality, apart from the dimension of Neuroticism, were found to be significant predictors of delinquency. As hypothesized, personality had a larger effect on delinquency than cumulative family risk. However, including both personality and cumulative family risk in a model predicting delinquency produced the best predictive power. Agreeableness and Conscientiousness were linked with decreased delinquency, whereas Extroversion and Openness to experience were linked with increased delinquency. Personality also partially mediated the effect of cumulative family risk on delinquency. The results of the mediator analyses suggest that the family risk factors may have increased personality dispositions to react in a certain way, which in turn added the risk of participating in criminal behaviour or protected youth from reacting through delinquency.