Citation

Palmer EJ, Hollin CR. Leg. Crim. Psychol. 2004; 9(1): 57-68.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2004, British Psychological Society, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1348/135532504322776852

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Purpose. The purpose of this study was to investigate the utility of the Psychological Inventory of Criminal Thinking Styles (PICTS) in predicting reconviction in a sample of male prisoners.Method. The PICTS was administered to 174 incarcerated male offenders at the point of their release from prison. Reconviction data were collected at a 2-year follow-up.Results. Of the eight PICTS scales, only superoptimism differed significantly between reconvicted and non-reconvicted prisoners, even when age and number of previous convictions were controlled for. Reconvicted offenders scored significantly higher on superoptimism, indicating a more criminal attitude. This finding was supported by a sequential logistic regression, where superoptimism contributed significant predictive power to predicting reconviction beyond a model containing age and number of previous convictions.Conclusions. The results are compared with previous research using the PICTS to predict release outcome. The utility of the PICTS as a predictor for release outcome is discussed.

Language: en