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Crime Continuity and Psychological Inertia: Testing the Cognitive Mediation and Additive Postulates with Male Adjudicated Delinquents

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Abstract

Objectives

Crime continuity is one of the best documented and least understood aspects of criminal behavior. Psychological inertia, the notion that cognitive variables mediate the relationship between earlier and later expressions of the same behavior, was tested as a possible explanation for crime continuity.

Methods

The cognitive mediation and additive postulates of the psychological inertia theorem were tested in a path analysis using self-report data from 1170 male delinquent members of the Pathways to Desistance study (Mulvey in Paper presented at the American Society of Criminology Annual Meeting, Chicago, IL, 2012). Wave 1 delinquency served as the independent variable, Wave 3 delinquency served as the dependent variable, Wave 2 outcome expectancies for crime, self-efficacy, general criminal thinking, and social capital served as the mediator variables, and 12 different baseline measures from criminological theory served as control variables in this study.

Results

General criminal thinking and low self-efficacy successfully mediated the relationship between past and future offending after age, race, early behavioral problems, peer criminality, family criminality, parental knowledge and monitoring, parental hostility, routine activities, measured intelligence, and precursors for each of the mediators were controlled. Social capital (cumulative disadvantage), by comparison, failed to mediate crime continuity in this study.

Conclusions

Effective cognitive mediation of the relationship between Wave 1 offending and Wave 3 offending and evidence that the effect may be additive offer preliminary support for the cognitive mediation and additive postulates of the psychological inertia theorem. Practical implications of these results include the need to routinely assess cognitive factors in criminal populations and target these factors for intervention.

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Notes

  1. The ratio of the indirect effect to the total effect should not be interpreted as an effect size measure nor should it be compared across studies (Hayes 2009). However, it may provide useful information when comparing results from the same study, particularly when the only difference between the two pathways being compared is the mediator variables.

  2. When the three cognitive variables were combined to form a single cognitive measure and cross-lagged with total offending at Waves 1, 2, and 3 the results indicated that while Wave 2 cognition mediated the Wave 1–Wave 3 offending relationship (Estimate = 0.016, 95 % Confidence Interval = 0.006, 0.030), Wave 2 offending failed to mediate the Wave 1–Wave 3 cognition relationship (Estimate = 0.005, 95 % Confidence Interval = −0.002, .0.015).

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Acknowledgments

Author would like to thank those associated with the Pathways to Desistance study for publicly releasing their data.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Criminal Justice, Kutztown University, Kutztown, PA, 19530-0730, USA

    Glenn D. Walters

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  1. Glenn D. Walters
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Correspondence to Glenn D. Walters.

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Walters, G.D. Crime Continuity and Psychological Inertia: Testing the Cognitive Mediation and Additive Postulates with Male Adjudicated Delinquents. J Quant Criminol 32, 237–252 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10940-015-9262-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10940-015-9262-9

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