"No Remorse, No Repent": Linking Lack of Remorse to Criminal Offending in a Sample of Serious Adolescent Offenders

• NCJ Number: 251887
• Journal: Justice Quarterly Volume: 34 Issue: 2 Dated: 2017 Pages: 350-376
• Author(s): Alex R. Piquero
• Date Published: 2017
• Length: 27 pages
• Grant Number(s): 2007-MU-FX-0002
• Sponsoring Agency: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP)
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Research (Applied/Empirical); Report (Study/Research); Report (Grant Sponsored); Program/Project Description
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This study used data from a sample of serious adolescent offenders followed for 7 years in order to test Warr's hypothesis that regret is related to discontinuity in offending or, conversely, that a lack of remorse may be related to continuity in offending.

Abstract

Linking emotions to offender decision-making has only recently become of theoretical interest to criminologists, but empirical work in this area has not kept pace nor has such research examined the role of emotions in offending in offender-based samples. Recently, Warr outlined regret as one such emotion that may be useful in thinking about offending. Results of the current study provide support for Warr's hypothesis that remorse-resistant adolescents incur a higher number of re-arrests, while remorse-prone adolescents incur fewer re-arrests, even after controlling for other relevant risk factors. (Publisher abstract modified)