The Sexual Behaviour of Young Criminals

Abstract

One of the ways in which the psychiatrist differs from others who work with delinquents is in the importance attached to the sexual history of the offender. The contribution of psychiatrists in this respect has been mainly confined to a description of the emotional and dynamic aspects of sexual adjustment. But it is reasonable to suppose that if these emotional differences are as important as they seem to be from a study of individual cases, they would be reflected in differences in objective sexual behaviour, which are sufficiently definite to be used by criminologists in their more systematic studies. In the case of emotional relationships within the family, for example, psychiatric emphasis has induced criminologists to consider “broken homes” or “maternal separation” in a systematic way, but very few attempts have been made to relate the objective aspects of sexual behaviour and development with criminal behaviour. Even in the Gluecks' exhaustive study of five hundred delinquents and controls, which included psychiatric examination, sexual behaviour was not recorded, but only the presence or absence of sexual conflicts.