Predictors of Juvenile Training School Violations in Thailand

Premruedee Buntamchuai

Mahidol University, Thailand

Abstract:

The objective of this research was to study factors affecting the violation of regulations by juveniles during confinement at the Juvenile Training School in Thailand. The study was conducted with 420 juvenile delinquents aged 14-19 years with the institutional misconduct involving: not attending class or activities, growing a mustache, tattooing, etc. Also studied was classification of the pattern of institutional misconduct behavior with discriminant analysis statistics. There were three patterns of institutional misconduct behaviors, and an equation for predicting group membership was created; institutional danger, institutional disruption, and institutional deviance with 71.4%, 66.4% and 72.4% accuracy respectively. Moreover, importation factors found to be statistically significant included gender, age, criminal history, domestic violence and peers. Deprivation factors that were found to be statistically significant included length of confinement, low self-control and staff performance.

Keyword:

Juvenile delinquency, Institutional Misconduct, Juvenile Training School, Importation, Deprivation.