Is it what adult violent offenders think or how they think that discriminates them most
from non-offenders? This study investigates whether violent and criminal sentiments,
attributional biases and violence based grievance resolution strategies represent dynamic
criminogenic risk factors. The results indicate that it is what offenders think that
discriminates them more than how they think.
The participants were 546 adults comprising 105 violent offenders, 238 university
students and 203 men and women from a stratified random community sample. Using
interview data from high-risk violent offenders, two scales were specifically developed to
measure the variables of interest. The differences between offenders and non-offenders in
violent attitudes was measured by expanding the scope of the Criminal Sentiments Scale.
The differences in attributional biases and problem solving was assessed by a second
scale developed for this study.
The results showed that offenders were clearly different from non-offenders with the
offenders endorsing significantly higher criminal and violent sentiments with an effect
size of h2 =.46. The offenders also reported a significantly higher level of violence-based
resolution strategies to end grievances than non-offenders. However, the surprising
finding was that the adult male high-risk offenders did not demonstrate more pronounced
hostile attributional biases than either adult men and women students or men and women
from the community. The results imply that believing violence is acceptable and being
prepared to use violence is more criminogenic than how you interpret the social
behaviour of others. These findings have important implications for our understanding of
why grievances escalate and the development of more effective intervention programs.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/221768 |
| Date | January 2006 |
| Creators | sallyfstevenson@yahoo.co.uk, Sally Kelty |
| Publisher | Murdoch University |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | http://www.murdoch.edu.au/goto/CopyrightNotice, Copyright Sally Kelty |
Page generated in 0.0176 seconds