title: Offenders' risk-taking attitude inside and outside the prison walls.
abstract: It has long been assumed that risk taking is closely associated with criminal behavior. One reason for placing criminals behind bars--aside from punishment and protecting the public--is to prevent them from engaging in further risky criminal activities. Limited attention has been paid to whether being inside or outside prison affects offenders' risk-taking behaviors and attitudes. We compared risk-taking behaviors and attitudes in five risk domains (ethical, financial, health/safety, recreational, social) among 75 incarcerated offenders (i.e., offenders who are currently in prison) and 45 ex-offenders (i.e., offenders who have just been released from prison). Ex-offenders reported higher likelihood of engaging in risky behavior, driven largely by a willingness to take more risks in the recreational and ethical domains. Benefits attributed to risk taking as well as risk perception did not differ between incarcerated and ex-offenders, indicating that the opportunity to take risks might underlie behavioral risk intentions. Our results also indicate that risk-taking activities are better predicted by the expected benefits rather than by risk perception, aside from the health/safety domain. These results highlight the importance of studying the person and the environment and examining risk taking in a number of content domains.
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, University of Plymouth, Plymouth, UK.
authors.forename: Michaela
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Gummerum
authors.forename: Yaniv
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Hanoch
authors.forename: Jonathan J
authors.initials: JJ
authors.lastname: Rolison
mesh_terms: D001290:Attitude; D003415:Crime / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D011329:Prisoners / Q000523:psychology*; D012309:Risk-Taking
keywords: Domain-specific risk taking; environment; ex-offenders; incarcerated offenders