Emotional Regulation and Impulsivity as Predictors of Offender’S Status (Recidivism and Non Recidivism) Among Inmates In Awka Correctional Service.

Abstract

Crime is a complex human phenomenon that has no universal approach in handling across cultures, religion or even countries. Nonetheless, incarceration is somewhat a global approach in managing violent offenders; aiming at extinguishing their criminal behaviour. Some offenders withdraw from crime after serving their first conviction while others go on and even become more hardened; leading to multiple incarcerations at different times, necessitating the search for psychological factors, (emotional regulation and impulsivity) that predict offender’s status. 103 inmates in Awka Correctional Service participated in this study and they were all Christians and all male. Their age ranged from 18 to 45 years with mean age of 30.3 and standard deviation of 8.8. Among the 103 inmates, 83 (80.6%) were single while 20 (19.4%) were married. 28 (27.2%) were employed before incarceration while 75 (72.8%) were unemployed. 17 (16.5%) among them have Tertiary education, 76 (73.8%) have O, level, while 10 (9.7%) have first school leaving certificate. 48 (46.6%) were recidivist while 55 (53.4%) were none-recidivist. Two instruments were used for data collection: Emotion Regulation Questionnaire and Barratt Impulsiveness Scale. The research design was a correlational design while Binary logistic regression was adopted for analyses of the data. The result showed that Emotional regulation such as cognitive appraisal (β = -.090; OR = .914 with 95% CI (.861, .969)) significantly predicted offenders’ status; nonetheless, emotional suppression was not associated with any increase in offenders’ status. Impulsivity also significantly predicted offender’s status at (β = -.090; OR = .914 with 95% CI (.861, .969)). Lastly, emotional regulation and impulsivity jointly predicted offender’s status at χ2(8, 103) = 49.984, p < .01. Hence, it was recommended that family members of inmates should pay more attention to their psychological needs.