Criminal Attitudes of Ex-Prisoners: the Role of Personality, Anti-Social Friends and Recidivism

Background: Previous research suggests that those who enter prison with a low level of criminal attitudes, tend to acquire more deviant attitudes during their sentence due to persistent contact with criminal others, and moreover, presence of criminal personality may be sufficient to develop criminal attitudes.
Aim: To determine which of the independent variables: age, education level, marital status, number of children, location, recidivism, association with criminal friends, and personality traits could be used to explain why ex-prisoners hold criminal attitudes.
Method: The Measure of Criminal Attitudes and Associates together with Eysenck Personality Questionnaire and Recidivism Scale were distributed to the opportunistic sample of sixty four ex-prisoners (N = 64).
Results: Multiple regression analysis reported that personality, association with criminal friends, and recidivism explained 71% of the variance in criminal attitudes, indicating psychoticism as the best predictor of criminal attitudes.
Conclusion: This study constitutes the first piece of empirical evidence demonstrating a predictive relationship between antisocial personality traits and criminal attitudes. These results lead to a better understanding of the underlying psycho-sociological mechanisms of criminal attitudes and indicate that future research regarding the nature of criminal attitudes should consider the role of personality, associations with criminal friends, and recidivistic behaviour.