ABSTRACT
Chapter 8 marks a shift in focus away from a descriptive analysis of criminal thinking (definitions and assessment) to a functional analysis of criminal thinking’s potential role in a working paradigm for criminology. After distinguishing between clinical risk and theoretical risk, the chapter transitions into a review of criminal thinking as a possible risk factor for crime. The predictive power, incremental validity, and dynamic risk status of criminal thinking are then evaluated using data from the PICTS, proactive and reactive proxy scales, and alternate measures of criminal thinking. The results of this review support criminal thought content and criminal thought process as potentially important risk factors for future offending behavior. This chapter also includes a section on reciprocal risk whereby two variables are found to predict each other almost as well as they predict themselves. Accordingly, prior substance misuse may predict future offending almost as well as prior offending and prior offending may predict future substance misuse almost as well as prior substance misuse. Likewise, prior criminal thinking may predict future offending almost as well as prior offending and prior offending may predict future criminal thinking almost as well as prior criminal thinking.
