Self-Concept Comparisons of English and American Delinquents

Abstract

The Tennessee Self-Concept Scale (TSCS) was administered to 223 United States and 180 English institutionalized juvenile offenders. In a crosscultural comparison of the subjects on the six TSCS empirical scales, both groups present indications of significantly more psychopathology on five of the six scales than nondelinquents. When the two groups are contrasted, the U.S. group is found to score significantly higher, overall, in psychopathology than the English delinquents. Discriminant function analysis identified two of the six empirical psychopathology scales, Personal Integration and Personality Disorder, capable of distinguishing the subjects by country. Analyses of the data suggest that recent-past and current conservative policies governing official responses to youth crime fail because they tend to address delinquency as if the underlying causes are constitutional. Rather, this data suggest that the differences found between the two groups are cultural in nature.