Browsing by Author "Rönnberg, Minna"

Various studies have established that juvenile delinqency is often characterized by group nature. Although co-offending is the most common criminal style during adolescence, solo offenders exists too. Previous studies have shown differences in terms of criminal style, including age and typical offenses. The aim of this study is to explore if there can be found differences regarding the personality structure. We expected to find a more criminal personality profile in solo offenders compared to co-offenders, since co-offending delinquency has been considered in the literature even as a normal phenomenon in adolescence. Furthermore, we expected youths with mixed criminal style to differ the most from other groups in terms of neuroticism, conscientiousness and agreeableness. The data is drawn from the national Finnish Youth Crime Survey 2012 (N = 4855). Personality was assessed with the shortened Big Five Inventory (BFI-S) and delinquency was measured by involvement in five different types of criminal behavior. Criminal style was assessed by asking the youths if they did the offense in question alone or in company of one or more offenders. Multivariate analyses of variance (MANOVA) and logistic regression were used to examine the personality profiles and differences between youths representing different criminal styles. Contrary to the hypothesis, solo offenders and co-offenders differed only regarding extraversion. However, when analyzing the results at the offense type level, the results showed preliminary differences concerning other traits. In line with previous studies, the most common offenses for co-offenders were crimes against property, while for solo offenders crime against persons was the most typical offense. As hypothesized, youths with mixed criminal style differed most strongly from the other groups in terms of personality traits. The findings of the study suggest, that to understand why some youths choose to act on their own in the matter of delinquency, we need to study other factors in addition to personality traits.