European Journal of Forensic Sciences DOI: 10.5455/ejfs.186161 www.ejfs.co.uk 6 Eur J Forensic Sci ● Oct-Dec 2015 ● Vol 2 ● Issue 4 INTRODUCTION Commonly, the purpose of incarcerating criminals is to punish or rehabilitate them to prevent recidivism [1]. Psychologists, sociologists, and lawyers propose a variety of reasons for recidivism. Sociologist and social pathologists, for example, introduces social factors and economic situations as the causes of crime. On the other hand, psychologists count for psychological disorders as causes of committing a crime. These days’ mono factorial perspectives lost their influence on social issues surveys, and multifactorial perspectives are attracted the attention of researchers so that interdisciplinary studies are more preferred. There are some questions yet; are the convicts born to be an outlaw, or they learn to be a lawbreaker? What are the reasons for reoccurring crime acts? [2]. Personality disorders and their effects on committing crime acts have cached more attention [3]. Preventing crime and its recurring is a major concern of every society, and lots of research is done to clarify how it could be reachable [4]. The researches have shown some demographic and economic factors although these results could not be much helpful for prevention purposes [5]. There is a considerable need to investigate risk factors of crime committing and among them, recognizing psychological factors can be useful. Kafashi and Islami (2009) introduced the Iranian prisons as a place of acquiring more negative experiments. They concluded that nonorganized prisoners and lack of rehabilitation facilities in Iranian prisons could have led to crime recurrence [1]. However, considering the environment of prisons was same for all prisoners, and all of them did not have such an experiment, it could be said that some individual differences may provide some of the prisoners to absorb negative experiments. Personality factors are among the factors that got more attention and also are well documented. Recent research shows that personality disorder prevalence rate is much higher among prisoners and convicted people. Mazaheri et al. (2010) reported that 95% of prisoners had some degrees of psychological problems [6]. Personality development process may have some effects on criminal behaviors [7]. On the other hands, some researchers have proposed shame creation process as a way to decrease criminal behaviors of prisoners [8]. The others proposed solutions such as classifying and separating prisoners based on their types of crime, improvement of services to the prisoners, removing stigma and unpleasant label from released prisoners, after releasing follow-ups, facilitating acceptance among family members, friends and official organizations for ex-prisoners, and preventing some types of rejection toward them [1,9]. Considering rare studies regarding psychological related factors of recidivism conducted in Iran. Therefore, the researcher aimed to investigate the prevalence of personality disorder in relation to repeated crime among male prisons of Ardebil. Investigating the prevalence of personality disorders in relation with recidivism among prisoners Hossein Ghamari Kiwi 1 , Ahmad Sadeghi 2 Original Research ABSTRACT Background and Aim: As high percentages of prisoners commit at least one crime after releasing from jail, recidivism has become a major issue in the criminology field. Our aim was to investigate the personality disorders in relation to recidivism in male prisoners. Methods: The study included all male prisoners of Ardabil city (Iran). The sample included 65 prisoners (32 first-time prisoners and 33 with recidivism) and participants measured through standard questionnaires included demographic information and Millon’s personality disorder inventory. Results: The results showed that the rate of a personality disorder is high among prisoners specially in antisocial, borderline, and paranoid personality disorders. In addition, the groups (first - time prisoners and participants with a previous history of recidivism) were significantly different regarding antisocial, borderline, paranoid, sadism, negativism, and narcissism scales. Conclusion: According results of this study some personality disorders such as antisocial and borderline is more prevalent among male prisoners of Ardebil. Therefore, may be considering and treatment of personality related problems helps to the prevention of recidivism. KEY WORDS: Forensic sciences, forensic psychiatry, crime repetition, personality disorders, Inmate, recidivism 1 Department of Psychology, Mohaghegh University of Ardebil, Ardebil, Iran, 2 Department of Law, Islamic Azad University of Aedebil, Ardebil, Iran Address of correspondence: Ahmad Sadeghi, Department of Law, Islamic Azad University of Aedebil, Ardebil, Iran. E‑mail: didehdar@gmail.com Received: April 20, 2015 Accepted: June 11, 2015 Published: October 15, 2015