Characteristics of young motor thieves in custody

Abstract

This paper reports the results of a survey of 538 male inmates of Young Offender Institutions. Various measures of frequency of motor theft in this sample are presented. There is a rapid rise in the apparent frequency as one moves from the simple measure of ‘principal offence in current charge’ (2%) through other measures including past behaviour and self-reports to the figure of 72% who had some motor theft in their background. Motor theft would seem to be part of the general repertoire of behaviour of young offenders in custody. A small sub-group of repetitive motor thieves was compared with the rest of the sample. No differences were found between this group and the remainder of the sample on information about family background, employment or frequency of getting drunk, use of drugs, gambling or the use of video games. They were more likely to have convictions for motor and non-motor theft, though less likely to have a current conviction for violent acquisition, and more likely to have previous youth custody. They had significantly higher scores on Psychoticism and Impulsiveness and a higher report rate in their current sentence.