Criminological characteristics of the personality of minors guilty of property crimes

The article discusses thecriminological characteristics of the personality of minors guilty of property crimes: thefts, robberies, plunders, and extortion. By theresults of the research it is confirmed that minors committing property crimes possess similar social-demographic, criminal-legal andmoral-psychological characteristics. The research has shown that the modern minor property criminal represents a certain social typepossessing a special attitude towards the reality, which is scornfulness to the common rules and norms of behaviour in the society. Minorproperty criminals have a special system of values with the priority given to material assets. The results of the research testify thatthe majority of property criminals are young (16-17 y.o.) men and girls, mainly brought up in full families, with average life-level. Girlsmake up 20% of the offenders. There is a dependency between the age of minors and the number of crimes they commit: the older theybecome, the more they break the law. The types of crimes change as well. Most part of property crimes are made by minors in group.The research has shown that property criminals do not have positive needs in work and study. Their leisure is mainly of entertainingcharacter. The research has confirmed that minor property criminals had essential gaps in the field of legal knowledge, erroneous understandingof the content of the basic legal instructions. The study of motives of crimes has shown that motives identical to those of adultcriminals prevailed. They are connected with the system of negative requirements of minors. Among the basic motives there was amercenary motive which represented prompting to commit a property crime for satisfaction of personal material requirements. A considerablepart of the motives of crimes is connected with the age features of minors (motive of growth, levity, pressure from otherpersons). The conducted research has allowed allocating classification groups of property criminals. Allocation of groups is made on thebasis of the basic motive of criminal activity, taking into account the intensity of its display. Characteristics of three classificationgroups of minor property criminals are allocated and given: casual, unstable, malicious.

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