Factors related to criminal behavior in minors in conflict with the law: A preliminary study

Abstract

Introduction: A nonexperimental descriptive study based on the naturalistic approach within the logic of interbehavioral psychology, is presented on this paper. The purpose was to identify certain factors associated to the criminal behavior in juvenile offenders. Method: To fulfill this goal, some categories of the Contingential Analysis were taken up to build an instrument to find out situational dispositional factors such as different significative other’s behaviors that may have influenced such people to commit crimes. The instrument was applied to 146 juvenile offenders belonging to a social rehabilitation institution in the State of Mexico. Results: Results show that participants report dispositional factors such as the kind of the place they were, carrying a weapon in that moment, being under drug’s influence, that someone forced him to commit the crime, among others, as those with the greatest influence to commit the crime for which they were arrested. Discussion: These results are analyzed and discussed in the context of the action’s plans implementation for the social reintegration of the study participants.