Self-fulfilment of a criminogenic individual: the importance of social environment

Abstract

Introduction. The relevance of the study of criminogenic individuals’ self-fulfilment is determined by the necessity to prevent recidivism. The paper considers the importance of self-fulfilment as an alternative criminological technique to examine the causes of crime, failures of resocialisation and reintegration into society after serving a criminal sentence. The research shows that self-fulfilment of criminogenic individuals is not studied enough along with other aspects of personality subjectivity. Thus, there is no holistic view of its specificity among individuals demonstrating sequential-criminogenic, situational-criminogenic and law-abiding behaviour, the role that social environment plays in overcoming difficulties. The aim is to describe the self-fulfillment of an individual depending on the level of criminality, as well as attitudes to the social environment that influence its realization. Research methods are divided into methods of processing theoretical information (analysis, synthesis, classification, generalisation), as well as empirical methods of survey and processing the results of empirical research (comparison of groups by Mann-Whitney U-criterion, calculation of the generalized linear model (general linear model, GLM). The empirical study is devoted to the study of self-fulfilment of individuals depending on the type of criminogenic behaviour and attitudes to the social environment. The sample of the study consists of 388 people covering 142 law-abiding individuals, 133 situational-criminogenic people and 113 sequential-criminogenic individuals. Results. The result of the study is an empirical description of the peculiarities of self-fulfilment, typical for individuals exhibiting sequential-criminogenic type of behaviour, and importance of the social environment. The study revealed that criminogenesis negatively affects the self-fulfilment of a criminogenic individual, making it difficult to choose a personal significant goal, its retention and achievement. The availability of relations with the social environment proves to be the essential factor to maintain the focus and dealing with difficulties in self-fulfilment of a criminogenic individual. Self-fulfilment of a criminogenic individual depends on the self-attitude as a subject of interaction with others and participation of other people in personally significant goal attainment. The results can be applied in theoretical studies of criminogenic individuals, designing programs aimed at prevention of recidivism.