Moral disengagement: relation to delinquency and independence from indices of social dysfunction

This article explores the relations of moral disengagement with several legal, institutional, and demographic characteristics of young offenders held in custody. The sample consisted of 152 randomly selected male young offenders from the largest young offenders' institution in Scotland. The age of the sample ranged from 16 to 21 (M = 18.9, SD =1.3). The respondents took part in a structured interview asking about several sociodemographic characteristics, and they completed the Moral Disengagement Scale. The sample in the study scored significantly higher on moral disengagement in comparison to a community sample. Higher moral disengagement was related to the offenders' families receiving help from a social worker; the expectation of an unstable living situation after custody; drug use before custody; and intention of drug use after custody. However, the lack of relation of moral disengagement to most of the social, family, school, employment, legal, and lifestyle characteristics of the sample suggests that moral disengagement is an independent variable exerting an influence on juvenile delinquent behavior over and above the social characteristics of juvenile delinquents.     

Young Offenders’ Decisions to Re-offend as A Breakdown of Self-Regulation of Hierarchically Organised Feedback Loops: The Role of Moral Disengagement in Formulating Decisions to Re-offend

The present paper examines young offenders’ decisions to re-offend, as a function of a breakdown of self-regulation, as represented by moral disengagement. There were 152 male inmates randomly selected from the largest young offender institution in Scotland and were asked to fill-in a moral disengagement scale and a questionnaire which assessed their cognitive representations. It was found that moral disengagement was neither related to frequency of offending nor age of initiation of delinquent behaviour. Moral disengagement was significantly related to attitudes, perceived behavioural control and intentions to offend in the future. Moral disengagement contributed to the prediction of intentions when the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) was operationalised through the direct measurement of the constructs of the model, although such did not contribute to the prediction of intentions when the constructs were operationalised by indirect, belief-based measurements of the constructs of the model. A model is proposed in terms of self-regulation of hierarchically organised feedback loops. Attitudes and perceived behavioural control are operating at the level of program control, as a function of disengagement of moral principles at the level of principles control.     

Perceived parental care and supervision: relations with cognitive representations of future offending in a sample of young offenders

This article focuses on the relations of two dimensions of perceived child-rearing practices, care and protection, as measured by the Parental Bonding Instrument and on cognitive representations of future offending in a sample of 152 young offenders. The relations of two different models, predictive of juvenile delinquency, are explored. Parental influences are thought to represent distal factors affecting juvenile delinquency, whereas cognitive representations, formulating the decisions of young offenders, are proximally related with juvenile delinquency. The focus of the research is the young offenders'intentions to reoffend, and it was found that intentions to reoffend in the future were predicted by attitudes toward offending and perceived behavioural control of future offending, whereas parental variables were redundant in predicting behavioural intentions of reoffending. Any effects of parental variables on behavioural intentions were mediated by the young offenders' attitudes toward offending.