Assessing criminal thinking in male sex offenders with the psychological inventory of criminal thinking styles

A sample of 543 male inmates undergoing sex offender treatment completed the Psychological Inventory of Criminal Thinking Styles (PICTS). As predicted, the PICTS General Criminal Thinking (GCT), Proactive (P), and Reactive (R) scores correlated with sexual risk as measured by the total score on the...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Walters, Glenn D. 1954- (Author)
Contributors: Deming, Adam ; Elliott, William N.
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
Published: 2009
In: Criminal justice and behavior
Year: 2009, Volume: 36, Issue: 10, Pages: 1025-1036
Online Access: Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
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Keywords:
Criminal thinking
SEX offenders
PICTS
Static-99
Description
Summary:A sample of 543 male inmates undergoing sex offender treatment completed the Psychological Inventory of Criminal Thinking Styles (PICTS). As predicted, the PICTS General Criminal Thinking (GCT), Proactive (P), and Reactive (R) scores correlated with sexual risk as measured by the total score on the Static-99. However, only the GCT and P scores correlated with sentence length, and none of the PICTS scores successfully discriminated between a current offense of child molestation and a current offense of adult rape/sexual assault. A confirmatory factor analysis verified previous factor analyses of the PICTS conducted on nonsex offenders whereby the PICTS thinking style scales displayed significantly better fit with a two-factor (proactive, reactive) than with a one-factor (general criminal thinking) model. These results lend preliminary support to the notion that criminal thinking in general and proactive/instrumental criminal thinking in particular have something to offer sex offender assessment.
ISSN:1552-3594
DOI:10.1177/0093854809342200