2. Aim... To examine the relationship between the type of offence and the attributions offenders make about their criminal act and then cross-validate earlier findings on an English sample. Methodology... To use Gudjohnsson and Singh (1989) 42-item ‘Blame Attribution Inventory’ (GBAI) to measure the offender’s type of offence and attribution of blame on the three dimensions.
3. Participants... 80 criminals who were serving sentences in Northern Ireland. They were divided into groups. The first group of 20 subjects had committed violent offences including homicide and GBH. Their mean age was 29. The second group of 40 sex offenders included rapists, paedophiles and those who committed sexual assault. Their mean ages varied from 41 for the paedophiles down to 28 for the other offenders. The final group of 20 had committed property offences including theft and burglary. Their mean age was 29.
5. Results continued... As expected, those who had committed sexual offences showed more remorse about their behaviour; this was followed by those who had committed violent acts against a person. Very little difference was found in the mental element scores for all the offenders. With regard to external attribution, the highest scores were found for violent offenders and the lowest for sexual offenders.
6. Results... (again!)... When comparing the English findings with the findings from this study, violent Irish prisoners showed lower mental element, lower guilt and higher external attribution scores. Yay! Results over...
7. Conclusion... The findings show strong consistency with earlier findings across the offender groups, which suggests that there is a strong consistency in the way offenders attribute blame for their crimes across the two countries. The only real difference was in the violent prisoners, which may be a result of the violent prevalent in the Northern Ireland at the time of the ‘Troubles’ of the 1980s and 1990s.
