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Abstract While the majority of offenders eventually desist from crime, the internal psychological mechanisms hypothesized to drive the process of desistance and offender change have not been systematically measured. This study developed scales for assessing intention to change, or offenders' beliefs regarding their perceived ability to stay crime-free (agency) and expected outcomes for crime and desistance (expectancies). Incarcerated offenders (N=142) endorsed these beliefs in a way that is consistent with theories of offender change. The structure of beliefs suggests offenders with positive expectancies for desistance and negative expectancies for crime also endorse a higher sense of personal agency to desist. Outcome expectancies for desistance were unrelated to static risk variables, suggesting these measures may be complementary to risk assessment. Overall, the scales developed for this research showed high internal consistency and evidence for concurrent and construct validity. Refining the measurement methods and assessing recidivism outcome post-release should further advance this avenue of research.
Lloyd et al. (Tue,) studied this question.