# Peer assumption: an illusory consensus hidden in the criminal responsibility of juvenile offender—evidence from psychology

## TL;DR

This study finds that juvenile offenders have lower self-control and empathy than their peers, suggesting legal assumptions about their criminal responsibility may be flawed.

## Contribution

The paper empirically challenges the legal assumption that juvenile offenders are similar to their peers in criminal responsibility.

## Key findings

- Juvenile offenders scored significantly lower in self-control and empathy compared to ordinary minors.
- Dialectical thinking ability did not show a statistically significant difference between the groups.
- Family factors like mother’s education and income only influenced dialectical thinking ability.

## Abstract

There is a consensus hidden in the criminal legislation of many countries that the criminal responsibility capacity of juvenile offenders is not significantly different from that of their peers. The purpose of this paper was to test this hypothesis. The research objects of this paper were 187 juvenile offenders in J Province, China, who are under detention measures, and 2,449 students from junior high school, senior high school and university in S Province as comparison objects. We subjected the gathered materials to independent-samples t-tests and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA).

(1) The self-control ability (109.30, 123.59) and empathy ability (63.86, 72.45) of juvenile offenders were significantly different from those of ordinary minors, but the difference of dialectical thinking ability was not statistically significant; (2) Except for the influence of mother’s education level and family income on dialectical thinking ability, the other variables had no statistical significance on the three kinds of ability. Therefore, it was suggested that the correction plan and means for juvenile offenders should focus on the improvement of self-control ability and empathy ability.