Psychosocial characteristics of Greek young offenders

Abstract

This paper presents the psychosocial characteristics of Greek young offenders attending a probation service. Measures included the Rutter and Graham Semi-Structured Child Psychiatric Interview, the Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices, and the Family Adaptability Cohesion Evaluation Scale. The age-range of the subjects was 12 to 18.6 years, the majority being between 15.5 and 17 years. The main offences were theft, physical violence and damage of property. Characteristics included recurrent offending (48.3%), coming from broken families (58.3%), family history of mental health problems (26.7%), and a high rate of borderline to mild learning disability (36.3%). Young people described dysfunctional patterns in their immediate families, particularly in the dimension of adaptability, on which almost all families (96.7%) were categor-ized as disengaged. There were high rates of affective disorders, as 22% of the young people fulfilled diagnostic criteria for major depression and 22% for dysthymic disorder. The findings are discussed in a sociocultural context, in comparison with previous research from western societies.