Criminal behavior results in negative, costly consequences for both individuals and society at large. Therefore, researchers have worked to identify variables that predict recidivism, or recurrence of crime. The variables with the strongest predictive power include criminal thinking, personality traits, antisocial peers, and family difficulties, among others. In addition, policy makers and stakeholders are creating interventions which target criminal thinking, to reduce criminal thinking and hopefully reduce future crime.
However, little is known about measuring criminal thinking in community youth for the purposes of early intervention and prevention of future behavior problems. Therefore, this study examined a measure of criminal thinking in community youth to examine item-level and measure validity. It also sought to examine if criminal thinking acts as a mediator between other risk factors and subsequent behavior problems.
Although some items may need to be revised, results suggested generally good validity for the total score. This study also supports the stability of criminal thinking in community youth, and thus could be used as a measure of change. Finally, results suggest that criminal thinking mediates the relationships between antisocial friends and parenting styles in predicting reactive aggression.
The results of the item-level analysis of this study highlight the similarities between psychopathy and criminal thinking. Questions also arise about the relationship between criminal thinking in community youth and more transdiagnostic concepts, such as emotion regulation problems. Overall, criminal thinking appears to be a viable target for assessment and intervention in community youth.
Doctor of Philosophy
Researchers seeking to reduce crime, because of its negative effects on society, have identified some features of a person and situations that are closely related to a person committing future crimes. Specifically, criminals tend to think in certain ways that promote crime, called criminal thinking styles. If those thinking styles are changed, then people may be less likely to commit future crimes. However, the field does not know if these criminal thinking styles are the same for youth in the community. Therefore, this study examined a measure of criminal thinking in community youth.
Results show that the measure seems to work appropriately in community youth. Although not all items are the best for these youth, overall, the measure works well in predicting behavior problems, as expected. The measure also shows that criminal thinking in youth generally stays the same over time. Finally, this study shows that some features of youth which predict behavior problems are related to behavior problems because of the presence of criminal thinking.
This study shows that a measure of criminal thinking, originally created for use in a justice-involved adult population, can also be used with community youth. It may then be used to assess youth who are on the verge of getting into trouble for criminal thinking styles. Interventions could use this measure to see if the criminal thinking styles are being reduced. Finally, because criminal thinking explains the relationship between other personal factors and behavior problems, interventions can focus on just criminal thinking, and not all the other factors, as a way to reduce future behavior problems.