Features of motivation for juvenile offenders’ unlawful conduct on property

Introduction. Under consideration is the motivation component of juvenile offenders’ unlawful conduct on property as the object of preventive impact, which predetermines formation of the most common type of juvenile delinquent behavior. The purpose is to establish psychological characteristics of juvenile offenders’ criminal motivation and differences of the motivation component in offenders and law-abiding juveniles and youths. Materials and Methods. The author's specialized projective methodology, designed to diagnose potential motives for delinquent behavior of minors against property, enabled the researcher to conduct a study among 82 minors registered in police for committing offenses against property and 134 law-abiding juveniles and youths. Results and Discussion. The author reveals the dominance of the potential criminal selfish motive in the structure of criminal motivation of juvenile offenders; the leading role of potential criminal security motive; significant stimulating potential of criminal motives of self-affirmation and increased self-esteem; the absence of a leading formative influence on the behavior of potential criminal motives of revenge, envy, playful and humane; situational significant impact of criminal physiological motive. At the same time, the indicators of the potential criminal selfish motive of offenders significantly exceed the corresponding indicators of law-abiding peers, while the latter more often have and more intensely demonstrate illegal impulses to increase self-esteem, self-affirmation, revenge and envy. Conclusions. The use of information obtained about the structure of criminal motivation of juvenile offenders, leading and significant illegal motives, as well as the differences from the motives of law-abiding peers is a prospective psychological area of preventive impact when taking measures of general and special prevention of juvenile offences.