Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Yakovchenko, Vera

Titel

The Moral Foundations of Criminal Thinking

Ort / Verlag

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses

Erscheinungsjahr

2024

Link zum Volltext

• ProQuest

Quelle

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses A&I

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• The US criminal justice system has long been criticized for its lack of transparency and fairness, particularly regarding risk assessment models and biased decision-making. While these models aim to predict recidivism, they are fallible and often exacerbate existing social inequities. Despite the widespread use of risk assessments by corrections agencies, these tools only provide modest predictions of recidivism, indicating potential weaknesses in theory and/or measurement.Criminal thinking measures are one of the central variables included in risk assessments. Criminal thinking tool development has been primarily focused on justice-involved populations, with few studies comparing populations with and without justice system involvement to set a baseline. Criminal thinking tools address aspects like blame, responsibility, entitlement, power, callousness, victimization, potentially encapsulating the moral underpinnings of these rationalizations and justifications. The weak direct connection between criminal thinking and criminal behavior suggests that individual characteristics and social and structural factors may moderate and/or mediate this relationship. The field requires more robust theory, transparent methods, and evidence-based programming and policies concerning criminal thinking and risk assessment.This dissertation seeks to expand our understanding of the complex relationship between criminal thinking, moral foundations, and criminal behavior. To achieve this, I examined: 1) how criminal thinking expresses in a nationally representative sample of 1000 US adults with and without a criminal history; 2) which criminal thinking scales (Entitlement, Justification, Power Orientation, Cold Heartedness, Criminal Rationalization, and Personal Irresponsibility) and items differentiate between those with and without a criminal history, 3) how moral foundations (Care, Equality, Proportionality, Sanctity, Loyalty, and Authority) map to criminal thinking, and 4) the extent to which moral foundations amplify or diminish the relationship between criminal thinking and criminal history.A clearer comprehension of the moderators and mediators influencing the connection between criminal thinking and criminal behavior could lead to improved accuracy in predicting crime and recidivism, as well as the development of more effective interventions and policies, ultimately contributing to a reduction in crime rates.