Problems of juvenile psychology of persons committing crimes in the sphere of information technology
Date: October 15, 2003Source: Computer Crime Research Center
By:
... in its cells 106-1015 of information units. Physiologists have increased this figure up to 1015. Engineers and mathematicians have presented quite fantastic figures of the size of human long-term memory. They think that a person is capable of remembering 1010-1021 of information units for 68-70 years. The Russian State Library stores within its precincts approximately the same size of information.
NextConsciousness at the juvenile age is in the dynamic and appears on the various levels of lucidity.
Most psychologists note some difficulties in studying consciousness as it is almost impossible to measure it with known scientific methods. The attempts of many scientists to find consciousness in the human cerebrum turned out to be unsuccessful.
Self-knowledge means an individual’s aspiration for knowing his physical, inner potentialities and qualities, his place among other people. It is important that a person should feel normal and the effectiveness of his practical activity be increased. There are three aspects of self-knowledge. First, it is an analysis of results of person’s own activity, conduct, contact and relationships with other people on the base of existing norms. Secondly, it is a realization of the attitude on the part of other people. Thirdly, self-knowledge occurs at the introspection of person’s own conditions, emotional experiences, thoughts and at the analysis of motives of some actions.
Self-knowledge is also a basis of self appraisal, which includes knowledge of the scale of values allowing a person to assess himself. Self appraisal can be adequate, i.e. real and objective, or inadequate, which in its turn can be both overstated and understated.
The dynamic of crimes among teenagers caused the necessity of conducting an extensive study of psychological aspects of juvenile crimes. So, from 1998 Russian Federation started carrying out psychological-psychiatrical analysis of new crimes - serial murders committed by teenagers and children. This phenomenon was called homicidomania -teenagers’ aspiration for committing murders. Earlier such irresistible striving was not observed at the juvenile age.
Self-knowledge can be considered as a basis of the development of constant person’s self-control and self regulation. Self-control is revealed in the consciousness and person’s assessment of his actions, psychic conditions and regulation of their proceed. Self-knowledge is directly connected with the level of person’s pretensions.
Psychologists offer a formula for person’s self appraisal: self appraisal = success (result) / level of pretensions.
L.Tolstoy wrote that a person is a fraction, which strives for a unity but never obtains it. The numerator of this fraction contains an image of a person and the denominator - what he thinks about himself. According to Tolstoy, what a person thinks about himself is often better than what he is in fact.
An attempt of self-assertion has touched also a juvenile striving for the penetration into secrets of information technologies.
According to American Nua.com, 10% of the Earth population or 580 million people have an access to Internet. In May 2002 Iceland where 68% of population had an access to Internet was in the lead by the level of penetration into the "world web".
Swiss (68% of population) took the second place by this index, the third one - Denmark (60,38%) and the USA (59,1%). The study showed that "a figure gap" between developed and developing countries goes on increasing. Europe has 32% of Internet users, Latin America - only 6%, Near East and Africa - 2% of all net users.
Internet favors boundless growth of a person in the personality and professional aspect. In Ukraine the number of individual users of the world infonet can hardly reach 0,5 million people. For comparison: in Russia - 15 mln. in the USA - 172 mln. Proceeding from principles of the Children’s Rights Protective Convention ratified by Ukraine in 1991, Ukrainian teenagers have a right to information and communication. The recent report of "UNESCO and information society for everybody" runs that "the right to information and communication is an obligatory condition of existence for a democratic society" On September 01, 2002 550 thousand pupils went to school for the first time, and in total - more than 6,3 mln children; 520 thousand - to collages, 2,2 mln - to universities. The education with the help of computer programs requires a detailed work of psychologists to reveal a positive interest and correct it on the level, which is sufficient for this age. Following parents and teachers, psychologists, psychiatrists and representatives of law enforcement bodies began to express the anxiety apropos of this phenomenon, which has not obtained a fixed name yet. Teenagers, whose all thoughts are concentrated upon computer amusements, are called gamers. Such a term as computeromania can be also met and it would be logical to introduce "gamerocidomania" - an irrepressible teenager’s striving to know computer technology in order to affirm himself and in some cases - commit a crime.
The sentence of Sosnovskiy local court said that an elderly woman A.P. returned home from the shop. In the entrance she was followed by three unknown fellows. Ascending on the first floor in a lift she saw them on the landing between the first and second floor. One of them caught hold of her bag when she started opening the door of her flat. Striking with her head against a wall, the woman fall down but she did not lose hold of her bag. A teenager pulled her over the steps up to the ground floor. Picking up a bag he ran away. They divided their plunder - 75 Ukrainian Hrivnas (15$). The motive - they needed money for the games store.
According to the law enforcement agency officers there are many cases when children stole money and things at their parents for the sake of computer games. About 90% of children with school bags can be seen in the games stores at day time that proves the non-attendance of lessons. Lawyers offer to register children with computer abuse as, for example, kid-tramps. Psychiatrists from Chercasskaya region point out that there is a phenomenon of computer abuse; some of those patients are brought to the doctor by their parents at the least twice a week. It is clear that parents bring their children to doctors as a last resort. The rehabilitation center dealing with such problems was opened in the environs of Petersburg.
In the West the problem of computer abuse has a longer history.
Everybody remembers the recent massacre in Guttenberg gymnasia (Erfurt, Germany) when a 19-year-old fellow killed 16 persons. Mass media informed that the massacre was committed by plot of a computer game. Such suspicions in respect of bloody games (sometimes very cruel and with elements of pornography) were often aroused in the USA. Psychiatrists and teachers say about the necessity of carrying out complex studies connected with the problem of computer abuse. The dynamic structure of the personality includes the person’s orientation, experience, features of psychic processes and biological properties. The orientation means convictions, world outlook, ideals, aspirations, interests and wishes.
Education is a main way of forming the person’s orientation.
The process of socialization is many-sided. One of its main directions is a forming of value-normative person’s orientation in the process of learning social experience and culture, person perception social norms as his own life principles. The process of person’s socialization includes formation of active social responsibility: realization of being indebted to the society, understanding of the necessity to observe social norms that finally assures a normative conduct, high level of person’s education, prevention of different manifestations on the part of his.
The socialization of a person is a process of forming under some social conditions. As a rule, already in his childhood a person joins in the historically established system of social relations. A person’s joining in social relationships is called socialization, which is carried out under the influence of such factors as a purposeful brining-up, education and activities. It should be taken into account that a child is socialized by not passively accepting different influences but gradually passing from positions of an object of social impact to a position of an active subject. All educators and parents must know that a child is active because he has needs and if in the process of bringing up they are taken into consideration, it will favor the development of a child’s activeness and formation of a harmoniously developed person. It is necessary to analyze such a stage of socialization as individualization, which includes juvenile and early youthful age. This age is characterized by a wish to differ from others or critical attitude towards social norms of conduct. It is juvenile age that is characterized by a firmly conceptual socialization at which fixed properties of a person are formed. In March 2000 Scotland-Yard arrested two 18-year-old hackers from a small village in Wales. Using Internet they managed to penetrate into electronic systems of banks in the USA, Canada, Great Britain and Thailand, where information on credit cards of their clients was stored. The burglars copied codes of 26000 owners of credit cards including Bill Gates, the chief of Microsoft Corporation. The guilty persons stated that they had tried to demonstrate their high knowledge of computer technologies. Computer "geniuses" did not use obtained information for their enrichment. However experts calculated that...
Add comment
Email to a Friend
