Who needs friends when you’ve got enemies? Understanding crime opportunities for people with psychopathy traits

• In Event: Topics in Network Criminology

Abstract

A key principle of learning theories is that a person’s social network creates opportunities for criminal behavior. On the other hand, propensity theories suggest that personality traits early in the life-course explain both a person’s social environment and criminal behavior. The current study used longitudinal data from the Incarcerated Serious and Violent Young Offender Study (ISVYOS) to investigate whether the association between adulthood criminogenic social networks and offending was spurious once accounting for early psychopathy traits. We used criminal justice system data to measure, in adulthood, the size and structure (e.g., density) of ego networks as well as a person’s positionality (e.g., betweenness centrality) within the broader network of ISVYOS participants. We investigated whether persistent offending in adulthood was a matter of having networks with numerous conflictual relationships rather than networks with numerous social ties with crime-involved peers. Cohen’s f2 was used to compare the independent contributions of criminogenic networks and psychopathy to reoffending. Structural equation modeling was used to assess whether criminogenic networks mediated the relationship between psychopathy and offending. The study can answer the question of whether it is who you are, who you know, or how many people you know, that counts.

Authors

• Evan McCuish, Simon Fraser University

• Martin Bouchard, Simon Fraser University