Property Crime And The Psychosocial Maladjustment Of Adolescent Students In Cameroon

Abstract

Property crime is a vice that is alarming in secondary schools in Cameroon. It’s a severe crime and call for concern especially in schools due to lack of needs and vulnerability of students. Nowadays, the rate at which adolescent students are involved in property crime is alarming. They engage in the various aspects of property crime such as: burglary, vandalism, arson, and larceny. Contextualizing property crime by peers included bicycle theft, book theft, snacks theft, which may have adverse psychosocial effects on the victims. Though they are diverse forms of victimisation among adolescents such as obvert victimisation, relational, property crime and power imbalance, this paper focuses on how property crime (burglary, vandalism, arson, and larceny and theft) lead to psychosocial maladjustments of adolescents in secondary schools in Cameroon. Contextualizing property crime by peers included bicycle theft, book theft, snacks theft. Mixed method was used in collecting data. Purposive and stratified sampling techniques were used to select a sample which comprised of adolescent students (577), counsellors (12) and discipline masters (12) from some schools in the North West, South West, Centre, and Adamawa Region (613). The instruments used for data collection were a closed-ended questionnaire for students, a focus group discussion with students, and an interview for counsellors and discipline masters/mistresses. Data obtained were analysed descriptively and inferentially using cross-tabulations, percentages, and multiple response sets. Statistically, findings showed that property significantly predicts psychosocial maladjustment of adolescents in secondary schools (P < 0.001), which is far less than 0.05. The positive sign of the correlation value (R= 0.501**) implies that adolescents are more likely to suffer from psychosocial maladjustments when there is a constant or persistent occurrence of property crime in the school environment. Therefore, the null hypothesis, which stated that property crime does not predict the psychosocial maladjustments of adolescent students in secondary school, was rejected. The findings imply that when there is persistent occurrence of property crime, the victim turn to suffer from psychosocial maladjustment. In order to reduce the adverse effects of property crime and promote positive psychosocial maladjustments among adolescent the various stakeholders especially parents, teachers, school administrators, and counsellors should play unique roles in organising forums to advice and counsel the students on the disadvantages of property crime. Furthermore, much security should be put in place based on property crime. Students who take bicycles to school should be advised to chain and lock them to avoid theft. Concerning theft of books, snacks, bags, and other properties in the class, students are advised to write their names on their books, and teachers and other school administrators are equally advised to counsel the students on the disadvantages of stealing. Parents should have talks with their children at home about such acts.