Psychological Reasons for Committing Crimes: A Case Study of Central Jail Peshawar

Abstract

The present study was conducted in District Central Jail, Peshawar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan to assess the factors shaping the criminal attitude of adults. The study proceeded with the objectives to assess the relationship between psychological factors with criminal attitude among criminals. A sample size of N=196 was randomly drawn from the universe. Sampling covered all the adult criminal of the age group of 18-64 years from the total population of N=360 convicted criminals. Frequency distribution and bi-vitiate analysis between dependent variable i.e. criminal attitude and independent variables namely psychological aspects were ascertain through cross tabulation while indexing the dependent variable. At bi-variate level, parents sentence several time was found significant, relatives’ involvement in criminal activities, large family was responsible for crimes, parents using intoxicants, joint family generating criminal attitude. Moreover, feeling of low social status, unhappy family life, commitment to family cause, broken family, low moral values, internalization of criminal values and vicious tendencies of crimes were found significant with criminal attitude.. The study concluded that poor family with large size had high interaction with criminals were some of the attributing factors for committing crimes.