Personality and criminal outcomes of homeless youth in a Nigerian jail population: results of PDS and MAACL-H assessments.

OBJECTIVE

The unprecedented incidence of armed robberies and the involvement of young people in these crimes necessitated - as part of a comprehensive study on homelessness and criminal behaviour in Nigeria - an assessmet and comparison of homeless youths incarcerated in prisons with a control group of non-prison and never-homeless youths from the general population using the Psychopathic Deviate Scale (PDS) and the Multiple Affect Adjective Checklist hostility subscale (MAACL-H).

METHOD

Through in-depth interviews using a questionnaire, data were collected from 100 randomly selected homeless inmates in three Nigerian medium-security prisons aged 15 to 26 (mean = 17.2), and another 100 non-prison and never-homeless youths from the general population aged 15 to 31 (mean = 25.2).

RESULTS

Hypothesis 1 showed a higher score on the PDS (mean = 29.3) and MAACL-H (mean = 21.7) among the homeless group than the non-prison and never homeless group (PDS mean = 21.2) and (MAACL-H = mean 12.5), (PDS (t = (98) = 6.62, p < .05) and MAACL-H (t = (98) = 21.7, p < .0001). The second hypothesis also showed a significant relationship between PDS and the type of crime committed by homeless inmates (F (2, 97) = 3.213; p < .05) and the direction of this relationship was higher for PDS and felony followed by misdemeanour offences (p < .05, LSD = 2.81). The MAACL-H did not reach an acceptable level of significance for type of crime.

CONCLUSION

These findings have significant practical and theoretical implications for personality and criminal outcomes for homeless youths in prisons when compared with non-prison and never-homeless youths. The study also suggests the need for more research in this direction and a review of antiquated penal policies for children, while the effective roles of governments and non-governmental organisations were also stressed.