Social-Psychological Causes of Youth Extremism in Krasnodar Region

Abstract

The authors study socio-psychological determinants of extremist criminal behavior of young people in Krasnodar Region within the framework of socio-economic, national and geographical specifics of the territory. The main goal was to identify and specify subjective (inner) causes as an aggregate of personal psychological features, needs, emotions, motives, specifics of conscience and volition that shape the intent and determine the qualitative side of extremist crimes. The authors used both general scientific (analysis, synthesis, induction, deduction, etc.) and special (statistical and specific-sociological) methods of cognition. The dominant source of information was results of a questionnaire survey of 146 young people who were residents of Krasnodar Region aged 18–24 with the same level of education; they were university students (57 %), and students of vocational schools and colleges (28 %). The obtained data were used for SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) analysis, which identified regularities in the formation of the public opinion typical for young people in Krasnodar Region. Besides, the authors established a factor commonality which served as a logical proof that psychological patterns typical of the youth environment, stereotypes and models of behavior act as determinants of extremist actions. All of these allowed the authors to state that there are a number of negative trends, such as the mental acceptance of some extremist actions by young people, especially actions against people of a different race, nationality, religion; this acceptance is common for 20 % of people aged 18 to 24; young people do not know about 5 out of 13 types of extremist activities included in the federal legislation; extremist information is easily available on the Internet. To eliminate these trends, the authors suggest a number of measures: activization of legal information campaign; identification of students who are highly likely to commit extremist actions; creation of a system of model features of extremist behavior to be used in the preventive work in educational establishments of Krasnodar Region; designing and teaching, on the regional level, a special subject of preventive nature to high school, college and university students.