Comparing boys and girls in juvenile detention in Portugal: differences in psychopathic traits, criminal behaviors, and one-year recidivism

ABSTRACT

Gender is a critical explanatory variable among juvenile justice system-involved youth, with the literature showing differential protective and risk factors for serious delinquency among female and male youth. The aim of the current study is to examine gender differences in psychopathic and related traits, externalizing behaviors, and offense profiles among a sample of female (n = 76, M = 16.37 years, SD = 1.16) and male (n = 214, M = 16.40 years, SD = 1.30) youth incarcerated in Portugal. Results showed that boys tended to present significantly higher levels of psychopathic/callous–unemotional traits, conduct disorder, proactive aggression, and also lower levels of empathy. In terms of offense profiles, boys tended to present significantly higher levels of crime frequency, crime diversity, crime seriousness, days in detention, and general and violent one-year recidivism, and also lower ages of crime onset, first legal problem, and first detention. Findings support the notion that gender-informed services and supervisions are essential for understanding and intervening among justice-involved youth.

KEYWORDS:

• Crime
• gender
• psychopathy
• recidivism
• youth

Acknowledgements

We are very grateful to the Ministry of Justice of Portugal and to the staffs of the Navarro de Paiva, Santa Clara, Santo António, Olivais, Bela Vista, Mondego, and Padre António Oliveira youth detention centers for collaborating with this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential competing interest was reported by the authors.

Data availablity statement

Data is available upon reasonable request.

Notes

1 The most pathological forms of delinquency, including life-course-persistent offending and related conceptual models (e.g., severe 5%, state delinquents, career criminals, serious, violent, and chronic delinquents) are overwhelmingly constituted by boys. Although there is significant evidence of severe delinquency among girls as well (Blackburn & Trulson, 2010; Butler et al., 2020; El Sayed et al., 2017; Vaughn et al., 2014; Wolff et al., 2017), its prevalence is much lower than among boys.

2 Level 0 involved no delinquency; Level 1 involved minor to moderate delinquency, including shoplifting, minor vandalism, stealing, minor drug dealing, minor fraud, pickpocketing, and carrying weapons; Level 2 consisted of serious delinquency, including assault, gang fighting, murder, rape, robbery, major drug dealing, carjacking, and arson; Level 3 consisted of repeated serious delinquency, including two or more serious previous level offenses.

Additional information

Funding

This study was partially conducted at the Psychology Research Centre (CIPsi/UM PSI/01662) School of Psychology, University of Minho, and was partially funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) and the Portuguese Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education (UID/PSI/01662/2019) through the Portuguese State budget (UIDB/01662/2020).