Anger and Prediction of Violent and Nonviolent Offenders' Recidivism

This study investigates the usefulness of assessing anger for the prediction of violent and nonviolent recidivism. Four risk/need measures and four anger inventories were administered to 252 Canadian federally incarcerated male offenders. The association between anger and recidivism was investigated by (a) comparing groups of participants classified to different levels of risks for recidivism according to their scores on actuarial measures of recidivism and their scores on measures of anger, (b) canonical correlation between the offenders' scores on measures of risk for recidivism and the anger inventories, and (c) correlating the clinical variables of age at admission, number of past offenses, and number of violent offences with offenders' scores on measures of anger. The results indicate that all comparisons are not significant. Results of this study shed doubts on the usefulness of assessing anger when predicting violent and nonviolent recidivism.