Repeated Offending of Jail Inmates in Prachuap Khiri Khan Provincial Prison

Abstract

The purposes of this research were to: firstly, study the environment of jail inmates who committed repeated offending; secondly, compare repeated offending committed by inmates who had different personal characteristics; and thirdly, study approaches of prevention and solving of inmates’ repeated offending. The sample, purposively selected, comprised 69 prisoners who had committed repeated offending in Prachuap Khiri Khan Provincial Prison. The research instruments consisted of a 5-level rating scale questionnaire and an in-depth interview. The data analysis employed frequency, percentage, means, and standard deviation. The testing of hypothesis employed t-test (independent sample) and F-test (One-way ANOVA).  The results of the research are as follows:                                                                                                     1. The jail inmates who committed repeated offending in Prachuap Khiri Khan Provincial Prison were 26 – 30 years old, of whom 53.60% were male, 86.96% were single, 50.70% had completed lower secondary education, 30.40% committed an offence for 2 to 8 times. Inmates who were imprisoned for the second, third, fourth, and eighth time made up 56.50%, 17.40%, 11.60%, 4.30% and 10.10% respectively. The length of imprisonment which was less than 1 year, 1-5 years, and more than 5 years made up 4.30%, 60.90%, and 34.70%, respectively. Prior to imprisonment, 71.00% had held temporary hired jobs, 72.50% were from economically middle-level families, 56.50% lived with parents, and 47.80% lived in rural villages.                      2. The top 3 environments outside the prison that the inmates who committed repeated offending had lived were: the   household’s economical status – their families had low incomes and the incomes were not certain, due to the nature of temporary hired jobs; the