Self Esteem And Psychosocial Factors Associated With Juvenile Delinquency

INTRODUCTION Juvenile delinquents are considered children, teenagers and youths up to 18 years of age whose behavior does not comply with the norms of society and is considered to be a punishable activity or crime. Criminologists are concerned with psychosocial factors of rapidly increasing incidence of juvenile delinquency. Juvenile delinquency has always been an important legal and social issue especially in the period of transitions from one system to another. It has been widely accepted that juvenile delinquency, as a part of the whole criminality, increases during the time of sweeping changes and social crises. Self esteem is a measure of one’s sense of self worth based on perceived success and achievements, as well as a perception of how much one is valued by peers, family members, teachers and society in general. Children may turn to delinquency after a history of devaluing social feedback, which has produced negative self-esteem. Delinquent behavior is then adopted because it inflates self-esteem through behavioral rewards and psychological defenses which allow the delinquent to reject general social feedback and to raise his self-perceptions. The link between global self-esteem and delinquency is currently being debated by researchers. On one side of the debate they have argued that individuals with low self-esteem are prone to real-world externalizing problems such as delinquency and antisocial behavior. However, others have questioned this claim, noting that several studies have failed to find a relation between low self esteem and externalizing problems. At least two distinct traditions in the social sciences hypothesized a link between low self-esteem and externalizing problems. Rogers have argued that a lack of unconditional positive self-regard is linked to psychological problems, including aggression. Finally, neo-Freudians also posit that low selfregard motivates aggression. For example, Horney and Adler theorized that aggression and antisocial behavior are motivated by feelings of inferiority rooted in early childhood experiences of rejection and humiliation. Despite these theoretical ABSTRACT Objectives: Objectives: The study was designed to assess the level of self Esteem of juvenile delinquents and to find the psychosocial factors associated with delinquency. Study Design: Cross sectional study. Duration and Place of Study: This study was conducted in Borstal jail of Faisalabad, Pakistan during a period of three months from February, 2008 to April, 2008. Subjects and Methods: A sample of 100 male juvenile delinquents was drawn from Borstal jail Faisalabad through Purposive Convenient Sampling technique. Data were collected from participants by using informed consent with the permission of the jail authorities. Result: In the over all picture of the data 56 (56%) of the total sample reported low self esteem. Mean of delinquents labeled as having low self esteem could only reach 13.46 on Rosenberg self esteem scale. High frequency of delinquent behavior was related to feeling of revenge with the mean of 6.00 and high frequency was also associated with love affairs with the mean of 2.80 in delinquents with low self esteem. Conclusion: Research findings concluded that low self-esteem, revenge and lack of supportive relationships are associated with delinquency.