BC-Department of Educational Psychology

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Browsing BC-Department of Educational Psychology by Author "Waichinga, Anne Wambere"

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    Psycho-social risk correlates of serious offending behavior among juveniles of school going age within Kenyan Borstal Institutions
    (Kenyatta University, 2025-04) Waichinga, Anne Wambere
    Serious delinquency among juveniles is a significant concern globally as indicated by the rising rates of juvenile recidivism in many countries. Recidivism among juveniles has been linked to seriousness of criminality. Several studies have associated it to insufficient preventive and rehabilitation processes and programs for juvenile offenders. This challenge is a deterrence to the realization of access to quality education for every child. In Kenya the problem of serious juvenile offending is a drawback to the milestones achieved towards the realization of quality education for all, sustainable development goals and vision 2030 flagship projects. Therefore, this issuenecessitates strategicintervention in order to ensure thatevery child enjoys their right to quality education. This study purposed to establish the association between psycho-social correlates and serious juvenile offending behavior among juveniles of school going age in Kenyan Borstal institutions. The study objectives sought to establish the relationship between antisocial attitudes, parental support, commitment to school, exposure to community violence and serious juvenile offending behavior among school going age juveniles incarcerated within Kenyan Borstal institutions. The study was guided by the Cognitive Behavior Theory proposed by Aaron Beck (1966). Thestudy adapted correlational research design. Thetarget populationwas all the250 male juvenileoffenders in ShimoLa Tewa prison, all the26 female offenders at Kamae Borstal Institution and key informants in the two institutions. To draw inferences from the targeted population, 49 male juveniles and 26 female juveniles were selected. Theresearcherused systematicsamplingmethod inShimolaTewa but targeted the entire population of female juvenile offenders at Kamae Borstal. 8 key informants comprising the superintendents in-charge of each institution, 3 welfare officers/counsellors, 2 teachers and 1 visiting counsellor were sampled using purposive sampling. A questionnaire incorporating scales from the Denver Youth Survey tool, Social Support questionnaire for Children and Self Report Delinquency Survey were used as instruments. A pilot study was conducted among ten serious Juvenile delinquents who were not part of the study sample. Central tendency and frequency counts were ustilised as descriptive statistics and correlation analysis as inferential statistics. The results indicated; a moderate positive significant correlation between antisocial attitudes and serious juvenile offending behavior (r(70) = .42, p = .000 ≤ 0.05), a weak negative relationship between parental support and serious juvenile offending behavior (r (70) = -.23, p = .05 ≤ 0.05), a weak positive but insignificant correlation(r (70) = .18, p = .14 ≥ 0.05) between commitment to school and serious juvenile offending behavior and a weak positive but insignificant correlation(r (70) = .16, p = .18, ≥ 0.05) between exposure to community violence and serious juvenile offending behavior. The findings also revealed high rates of recidivism (M =21.28, SD=3.05) and a high frequency of (58.2%: n= 42) indicating that targeted juveniles were serious offenders. The study did not establish any moderating effect of gender as the intervening variable. The study concluded that antisocial attitudes and parental support contributed to serious juvenile offending behavior but commitment to school and exposure to community violence did not influence serious juvenileoffending behavior. In the light ofthese findings, this study recommends a collaborative response among actors in the education and child protectionsectorstosafeguardinglearnersfromseriousoffendingbehavior.