The Psychological Inventory of Criminal Thinking Styles and Psychopathy Checklist: Screening Version as Incrementally Valid Predictors of Recidivism

A follow-up of 107 male federal prison inmates previously tested with the Psychological Inventory of Criminal Thinking Styles (PICTS) and Psychopathy Checklist: Screening Version (PCL:SV) was conducted to test the incremental validity of both measures. The PICTS General Criminal Thinking (GCT) score was found to predict general recidivism and serious recidivism when age, prior charges, and the PCL:SV were controlled. The PCL:SV, on the other hand, failed to predict general and serious recidivism when age, prior charges, and the PICTS were controlled. These findings support the hypothesis that content-relevant self-report measures like the PICTS are capable of predicting crime-relevant outcomes above and beyond the contributions of basic demographic variables like age, criminal history, and such popular non-self-report rating procedures as the PCL:SV.     

Effect of a longer versus shorter test-release interval on recidivism prediction with the psychological inventory of criminal thinking styles (PICTS)

The General Criminal Thinking (GCT) score of the Psychological Inventory of Criminal Thinking Styles (PICTS) was correlated with recidivism data obtained on 284 released male federal prisoners. The sample was divided into those inmates who had been released within 24 months of having completed the PICTS (shorter test-release interval; n = 138) and those inmates who had been released more than 24 months after having completed the PICTS (longer test-release interval; n = 146), and recidivism was measured by subsequent arrests and convictions accrued during a 6- to 78-month follow-up. Although the GCT score successfully predicted release outcome in the shorter test-release interval group, it failed to predict release outcome in the longer test-release interval group. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Structured Community Activities and Moral Engagement as Deterrents to Youth Violence: a Mediation Analysis

This study assessed whether youth involvement in structured community activities (scouting, team sports, volunteer work, and church-related endeavors) and a morally engaged belief system deterred future aggressive behavior in 1170 male delinquents. It was hypothesized that moral engagement would mediate the relationship between involvement in structured community activities and aggression but involvement in structured community activities would not mediate the relationship between moral engagement and aggression. A three-wave path analysis, in which structured community activities and moral engagement were cross-lagged at Waves 0 (baseline) and 1 and correlated with aggression at Wave 2, provided support for this hypothesis. Results showed that involvement in structured community activities encouraged moral engagement, which, in turn, inhibited aggressive behavior. Consistent with previous research, a social cognitive factor (moral engagement) did a significantly better job of mediating behavior (involvement in structured community activities) than behavior did of mediating a social cognitive factor.     

What You Should Know About Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) for Environmental Claims

The rapid evolution of legal and regulatory developments related to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) has already resulted in some high-dollar legal settlements and is expected to generate numerous environmental claims. Currently, most major PFAS sites are associated with the primary chemical production of select PFAS and the application of fire-fighting foams at airfields, refineries, fire training facilities and bulk fuel-storage facilities. In addition, PFAS are also used in the manufacture of consumer products designed to resist heat, stains, grease, water and reduce friction. Manufacturing facilities that produce these products may discharge PFAS to wastewater treatment plants, which are not designed to remove PFAS, and thus become dischargers also. The ultra-low detection limits and regulatory thresholds for PFAS, combined with the manufacturing and use of numerous PFAS-containing products, suggests the number of sites that require PFAS cleanup will increase in the coming years and decades. Therefore, understanding current capabilities and limitations of sampling, remediation, and forensics is critical to assessing PFAS-related environmental claims.     

The impact of general versus specific expert testimonyand eyewitness confidence upon mock juror judgment

Subjects (n=128) initially viewed an eyewitness of high or low confidence. Subsequently, participants viewed a psychologist who gave either espert testimony on the unreliability of eyewitness identification, specific expert testimony, or no expert (control) testimony. Subjects viewing expert testimony believed the eyewitness identified the gunman significantly less often, gave the defendant lower guilt ratings, estimated a lower general percentage of correct identifications under similar circumstances, estimated a lower percentage of general accurate eyewitness testimony, and gave significantly lower ratings to the belief that one can generally tell from eyewitness confidence whether an eyewitness is accurate than subjects in control conditions. Significant differences were also obtained between general and specific expert testimony. Participants viewing specific expert testimony estimated lower general percentages of correct identifications under the circumstances of the crime and reported relying more upon the psychologist's testimony than subjects viewing general expert testimony. Additionally, subjects viewing general expert testimony had significantly less confidence in their gunman vs. innocent person decision than subjects in specific testimony or control conditions. Subjects who viewed the high confidence eyewitness decided that the eyewitness correctly identified the gunman more often, gave the defendant higher guilt ratings, and estimated the general percentage of accurate eyewitness testimony to be significantly higher than jurors in low eyewitness confidence groups. The finding that jurors may continue to rely on eyewitness confidence to gauge the accuracy of the witness even after viewing expert testimony is discussed.     

Mapping the criminal mind: idiographic assessment of criminal belief systems

An idiographic procedure designed to assess the belief systems of criminal offenders is described, investigated, and clarified. This measure, the Cognitive Map of Major Belief Systems (CMMBS), assesses the five belief systems (self-view, world-view, past-view, present-view, future-view) held to occupy the higher echelons of human cognition. Modest to moderate test-retest reliability was achieved when 19 inmates, enrolled in one of three drug-counseling groups, completed the CMMBS on two separate occasions, 2 weeks apart. It was also ascertained that the drug treatment specialist who served as therapist for all three groups "blindly" matched the 19 CMMBS records to the inmates who produced them. A case study of one of the 19 participants was used to illustrate how the CMMBS is employed with individual offenders and how belief systems interact with major schematic subnetworks such as attributions, outcome expectancies, efficacy expectancies, goals, values, and thinking styles to create crime-supporting lifestyles.     

Use of the psychological inventory of criminal thinking styles to predict disciplinary adjustment in male inmate program participants

The Psychological Inventory of Criminal Thinking Styles (PICTS) was administered to program participants in two different federal prisons-a medium-security federal correctional institution and a maximum-security penitentiary-who were subsequently followed for a period of 24 months for evidence of disciplinary adjustment problems. Disciplinary outcome was measured by the total number of incident reports, the number of nonaggressive incident reports, and the number of aggressive incident reports received during the 24-month follow-up. Negative binomial regression was used to test the relationship between the eight PICTS thinking style scales and three disciplinary outcome measures because the total and nonaggressive disciplinary report distributions showed signs of overdispersion. The only PICTS thinking style scale to achieve statistical significance in this study was the Cutoff scale that successfully predicted total, nonaggressive, and aggressive incident reports in both samples.     

Measuring Low Self-Control and Reactive Criminal Thinking in the NLSY–Child Sample: One Construct or Two?

The purpose of this study was to determine whether a behavioral rating measure of low self-control and an attitudinal measure of low self-control can be viewed as measuring the same construct. It was hypothesized that the externalizing scale of the Behavior Problems Index (BPI-Ext), which served as a behavioral rating measure of low self-control in the current study, would display greater similarity to a 6-item self-report of antisocial, but not necessarily delinquent, behavior (SR-AB) measure than it would a 6-item attitudinal self-report measure of low self-control, labeled the reactive criminal thinking (SR-RCT) scale. This study was conducted on a sample of 6280 children (3144 boys, 3136 girls) from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth-Child (NLSY-C). A pair of confirmatory factor analyses revealed that the BPI-Ext and SR-RCT scales appeared to form two distinct constructs. In addition, the BPI-Ext correlated significantly better with the SR-AB than with the SR-RCT and the BPI-Ext and SR-AB achieved moderate negative correlations with measures of attention, concentration, achievement, and general aptitude, whereas the SR-RCT achieved small positive correlations. These results indicate that behavioral and attitudinal measures of low self-control are measuring different constructs, the former impulsive behavior and the latter reactive criminal thinking.     

ALLEGATIONS AND SUBSTANTIATIONS OF ABUSE IN CUSTODY‐DISPUTING FAMILIES1

In this study of 120 divorced families referred for child custody evaluations and custody counseling, multiple allegations of child abuse, neglect, and family violence were raised in the majority of cases. About half of the alleged abuse was substantiated in some way with one fourth involving abuse perpetrated by both parents. Different kinds of allegations were raised against mothers compared with fathers. Implications of these findings for social policy, family court interventions, and the provision of coordinated services within the community are discussed.