The Contribution of Cognitive Impulsivity to Criminal Risk
Abstract
Impulsivity increases risk for general, violent and sexual offending. Accordingly, helping offenders to become better regulators of their impulses is one goal of offender rehabilitation. In a correctional setting, the assessment of impulsivity focuses on personality and behaviour, but not cognition; cognitive impulse control impairments are inferred from personality styles and behavioural patterns suggestive of acting before thinking. However, empirical findings challenge the validity of inferring cognition from personality and behavioural measures. Additionally, without assessing cognition, practitioners are limited in their ability to isolate which cognitive processes are most impaired and therefore worthy of intervention for individual offenders. To establish the contribution of cognitive impulse control to criminal risk, a theoretically derived, empirically supported neurocognitive assessment framework was adopted. The framework is based on the notion that impulsive behaviour arises from three, potentially dissociable skill domains that support impulse control: decisionmaking, perceptual and motor impulse control. A cohort of 77 men attending intensive cognitive-behavioural rehabilitation was recruited from four of New Zealand’s prison-based Special Treatment Unit Rehabilitation Programmes (STURPs). A neurocognitive battery of five tasks collectively representing each cognitive impulse control domain was administered before and after the 8-month treatment programme.…
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